Tulip Time

Every year Holland Michigan holds a festival called Tulip Time.  More than 500,000 people come from all over for this time to celebrate the Dutch heritage of the area.  There is Dutch dancing in wooden shoes and authentic costumes, parades, carnival rides, lots of food and tulips!  Tulips are planted in mass quantities all over the city.
This year, as is happening with so many things, Tulip Time was cancelled.  However, the tulips are still blooming, so Heather and I drove out to see them on Tuesday.

Something we saw as we drove through Holland was this church.  It was built in 1856, when the area was first settled.  It's a big part of the history of Holland and has been featured in a few books. It was previously 9th street Christian Reformed Church, now it's called Pillar Christian Reformed Church.  Another interesting thing you can't see on the picture is the Rooster weathervane on the steeple.  It's something that a lot of churches in the Netherlands have to symbolize Peter and his denial of Christ, and a reminder that the church is made up of the broken and the blessed.

 Then we stopped here - Windmill Island.  This is the DeZwaan Windmill, built in the Netherlands in 1761.  It was very damaged when it was purchased in 1964 and moved here.  It's the oldest, authentic, working windmill in the United States and the last windmill that was allowed to leave the Netherlands.

A sign of the times!  Windmill Island is set up like an old Dutch town with houses and buildings you can go through.  Everything was closed, but we could still walk around outside and look at everything.

 Beautiful tulips everywhere!

Dutch style buildings with more tulips.

A bridge over a canal.

So many varieties of tulips.

The Windmill.

This windmill is huge!  It's the height of a 12 story building.  Can you see the blue door on the right side?  It's actually a double door that opened to allow farmers to drive their team of horses and wagon full of wheat into it.  Then they would unload the wheat and using a pulley system, hoist it to the fifth flour where it was ground.

 A stone that was used in the windmill to grind wheat into flour.  Wheat is still ground into flour here.

Surrounding the windmill are fields of tulips.

A final view.  Such a pretty spot!