We’re on our way! Yes, we’ve set off and today we visited Muiderslot Castle, a place Jip really wanted to see. He’s already seen Loevestein Castle and absolutely loves castles. Especially those from the Middle ages.
“They’re really old,” he told Mo and me, “and there’s so much to see from the past. Back then, they didn’t have cars and did everything with a horse, and if they had a lot to carry, they even had a cart behind the horse for groceries. And they didn’t have showers or the internet back then, they did have music, but they had to make it themselves on instruments, you know? Yes, and knights lived in the castle too, they had to fight if someone came along who they didn’t want to let in. A castle doesn’t have a normal door, you know, it has a big gate and a bridge that can be raised, and then you can’t get in because there’s water all around the castle, they did that on purpose back then.“
Well, Mo and I found that pretty interesting, of course, so we were keen to go with Jip to Muiderslot to see for ourselves how everything used to work in the castle.
Did you know that back then they also didn’t have electricity? So, no computers because they don’t work without electricity. And you couldn’t charge your mobile phone. And they didn’t have lamps. No, they used to light candles and go to bed early, which they had to do because it was cold in the castle, it had very thick walls, and if they wanted to get a bit warm, they had to burn wood, just like in a fireplace, you know? And they bathed in a tub; they had to fetch water from the well first, and then they could wash. Dirty clothes were also washed in a tub because there were no washing machines back then. No, they hadn’t been invented yet, and they also don’t work without electricity.
We did the Knight’s Route and went into the towers and even got to hold a falcon and pretend to be knights ourselves and walk around the garden.
Did you know there are a lot of plants that you can just eat? Yes, that’s true, really a lot, and they all grow at the castle because back then there were no supermarkets, right? No, there was no Albert Heijn (a Dutch supermarket chain). They had to grow everything themselves, otherwise, they wouldn’t have vegetables, and that’s why they had a big garden. Of course, they didn’t want to eat carrots every day, no, they wanted something different now and then, and for that, you need a big garden, which we also saw. It was really fun, yeah, really fun, I didn’t know a castle could be so fun but Jip was right and it was a good idea of Jip to go to a castle.” Look, this is where we’ve been:
On the way there, we stopped by grandpa Job’s place because he has a magic TomTom, and that comes in handy when you’re making a world trip. With a magic TomTom, you just have to say where you want to go and it drives you there, very easy, magic TomTom knows the way, and Jip and Mo look at the map, but that’s just for fun.
Tomorrow we’ll be somewhere else. You’ll see then. Now we have a question for you, this:
What do you think the answer is? Let us know!
Till tomorrow 🙂
JaNee