Delft
After leaving the train station, it was a short (and pretty) walk
to the Markt, the town's main square with its market.
(The Waag, Delft's medieval trading center)
(Town Hall c. 1620)
We started with New Church (new circa 1496). We walked up 376 stairs for beautiful views from the church tower.
William I of Orange is buried here, along with other Dutch royals. He was actually assassinated in Delft (by someone hoping the Spanish would pay a reward for his death. The dude was instead caught, tortured, and killed himself).
After admiring the church (aka resting), we went back out into the square where the Thursday food market was going on.
We stopped at a stand for hamburgers and fries to share (with rosemary sea salt mayo (delicious!!!) and ketchup).
From there we walked to the flower Market
(cheese shop!)
before continuing with Rick Steves' Delft walk.
During the short walk, we stopped for warm drinks (I had a ginger lemon infusion with elderberry syrup)
before continuing up to Old Church (unfortunately closed).
(Headquarters of the Water Authority--big deal in the Netherlands)
(I loved the delft street lights!)
Next we stepped into the Prinsenhof, a former convent,
before reaching the end of the old town.
From here we caught tram #1 heading towards The Haag, but we got off early to walk to the pottery factory we were visiting.
After a free tour to explain how delftware is made (and some shopping),
We retraced our steps to the tram and we were back on our way to Den Haag (half hour by tram).
The tram let us off not too far from the Mauritshuis, our art museum destination, which was good because it had not let off raining.
The Hague
The tram let us off not too far from the Mauritshuis, our art museum destination, which was good because it had not let off raining.
There were Rubens
(he worked with Jan Brueghel on this one)
and Rembrandts among many others.
The big highlight for me, however, was seeing Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Next it was the rather long walk to the Haag's Centraal station, first passing the Binnenhof Parliament Complex.
Amsterdam
This time the train took over an hour to get us back to Amsterdam Centraal. Once we arrived, we walked down to Damrak, the start of our Amsterdam city walk yesterday, in search of dinner.
Tonight we got Indian food off of this touristy road. It was really good, but a bit sketchy in the entrance, we had to walk down this long corridor and around a corner to get into the restaurant.
Back down to Dam Square
(It is starting to feel like we always end up here...)
Then cutting through the very edge of the Red light district on our way back to our hotel as the sun set.
Anddddddd here we go:
ReplyDelete• Delft was super pretty, obviously. My sister said that it was her favorite place in the Netherlands, and it was definitely up there for me.
• All of the fancy canal reflection photos in this post are great, but I really love Photo No. 3 with the flags!
• Do you remember how confused we were trying to find the Waag based on Rick's stupid ambiguous map? I feel like we stood around exclaiming "WHERE IS THE WAAG?" for a really long time (and pronouncing it "wag," which I'm sure is wrong, haha).
• Ah, the tower climb. From what I remember, this one wasn't so bad? (Translation: I don't have any deeply negative associations and so it cannot have been a completely horrible experience.) Wasn't this the climb where we started chatting with a random woman (the one who you made take our photo :-P), who evidently had been climbing with her sister but at some point her sister had a panic attack due to claustrophia or the height or something and disappeared, but I guess the woman never noticed? And then her sister reappeared on the way down (because this was one of those towers with only one set of stairs) and started yelling at her? Did I hallucinate this?
• Anyway, I thought the views were worth it this time. :-P.
• "[A]dmiring the church (aka resting)" made me laugh because it is true.
• Also amusing is the fact that we immediately replenished whatever calories were burned by the tower climb by eating giant burgers and mayo-drenched fries. BUT this was the meal that I was daydreaming about several posts ago, so NO REGRETS. I actually just had the brilliant* idea to see whether rosemary sea salt mayo is something that exists for purchase over here. Because it was so good! And you know I love a good burger. Or just any burger.
• LOL at that weird blue heart-shaped blob that I made us find.
• We had a COUPON for the drinks at that little place and therefore we were OBLIGATED to use it. While your beverage looks moderately healthy, I 100% had a gigantic, cream-filled caramel latte on steroids.
• That pottery factory was cute. What did you end up getting? NOT a teapot, I remember that much.
• The Hague...was underwhelming. And it was so rainy. And the walk down that long road with the station in the distance was...not enjoyable. BUT despite all that, this was NOT my most miserable "stuck in the rain" moment of the entire trip! :-P.
• The Girl with the Pearl Earring was worth it, though. I'm happy we made the effort. Check!
• So glad you have a photo to commemorate the sketchy entrance to that Indian restaurant, which was WONDERFUL once we actually made it inside, LOL. We should pick random places like this the next time we go somewhere. They make for fun stories.
• I will forever think of De Bijenkorf as only "that fancy yogurt place."
• OH, this was the evening where the sky turned pink and everyone in the city was furiously taking photos! Yours turned out so well!! I can't even choose a favorite to command you to frame, LOL.
*by "brilliant," I mean "fattening."