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Today was a pretty quiet one by our standards with only one short activity other than a bit of shopping.
This afternoon we took a one hour boat ride on the Old Rhine and an adjacent canal. The boat trip runs from the river which is about 15 minutes walk from our Jenny and Hein’s house. The boat was quite big and we sat at tables which had white cloths and waiters who bought us coffee and muffins.
The houses along the canal were pretty impressive and, no doubt, very expensive. Most had lovely boats, old and new, moored outside, some had their own docks. Some of the bigger new houses were thatched.
We passed several large commercial barges carrying goods. I believe some of them can carry the equivalent of up to 50 large trucks. The bigger ones carry a car by the cabin on the back and have a special crane on the back to lift the car on or off.
Interestingly the water level in the canal/river is at least 20 feet above the surrounding paddocks and contained by high banks, originally the windmills pumped the water from the drains that cross and surround the fields into the rivers. Now electric pumps are used.
