Day Eleven: The City of Delft

Today Rob and I met up with our friends Margaret and Yoni for a day trip to Delft. Our first impression was that Delft was kind of like Amsterdam (in terms of the houses and canals) but was INFINITELY nicer. It was still touristy, but in a more local kind of way. You could still see people who lived there on their ways to work or going about their daily routines. Everyone rides a bike and the downtown has no sidewalk so bicyclists and pedestrians have to be extra aware of each other as they share each others' turf.

There were a couple of things that we wanted to see while we were there. Delft is the home of the famous Delft Blue ceramics, obviously, but it's also the birth place of Johannes Vermeer and the death place of William of Orange, the first king of the Netherlands. It is home to two very beautiful churches, an interesting war and artillery museum, and a number of adorable cafes and restaurants that line the city market square.

We arrived by stoptrein to Delft and walked from there into the city center. The first this you see is the incredible Nieuwe Kerk (new church), but we wanted to see the Oude Kerk (old church) first, in order to compare the differences. Along the way to the Oude Kerk, we saw some wonderfully old houses and mansions running along the canals. And there are ducks, too. Yoni liked the ducks.

We arrived at the Oude Kerk and paid 3.50 Euros each for a ticket to view both the Old and New Churches. It a bit of an odd concept to me to have to pay to go inside a church... but to each their own I suppose.

The Old Church wasn't much to look at from the outside, apart from a wonderful steeple with a clock tower. But inside, my goodness, was it ever beautiful!

The entire floor was full of these large, carved tome stone-type slabs (about 400 people are burried there) which made walking a little difficult if you weren't watching where you were going. Which was sometimes a problem, because all I wanted to do for the first five minutes was look up at the huge, wooden vaulted ceilings. and the stained glass windows (which unfortunately aren't that old... circa 1950's. Apparently there was a mishap where the explosion of the town's gunpowder store in 1654 shattered all of the original windows. The stained glass is still gorgeous, though. And the organ! There was someone playing hymns while we were there, which was pretty awesome. There were a few monuments of buried Dutch notables, some of which were very beautiful, and also the tomb of Vermeer, which was kind of cool to see (he's one of my favourite Dutch painters).











After that, we left the church and looked at the City Hall building. We couldn't go inside, but the outside was pretty. The City Hall building faces the New Church across the Delft Markt in the center of the city. On either side are cute little shops selling all kinds of things, but mostly food and souvenirs. There was a very cozy antiques shop with old Dutch skates and Delft tiles, and there was a Gypsy band busking outside of it. I bought a pair of bright orange Holland slippers that look like klompen (wooden shoes). They are VERY comfy.


We made our way to the Nieuwe Kerk, which was stunning from the outside. It had gone through a few building projects where new steeple additions had been made, as well as additions to the outside walls as well. It's very easy to see the three stages of building on the tower. Once we got inside, however, I was surprised by the fact that I didn't like it as much as the Old Church. It was obvious that the church had been built in the wake of the Reformation, when opulence and significant decoration was more frowned upon and design was more about function than fancy. However, there was a beautiful modern stained glass window that had been installed in 2006 which was breathtaking. In the design you can see a face, two hands, and a butterfly. We managed to get quite a beautiful picture of it.





Also here is the tomb of William of Orange. There is an absolutely wonderful monument showing two different depictions of him, four different cornerstone statues depicting Liberty, Justice, Religion, and Fortitude/Strength. In the middle, standing over the dead body of William, stands Fame who is blowing the trumpet of good fame and holding the trumpet of bad fame. William's dog also made it into the monument. The story goes that after William's death, his dog refused to leave the foot of his bed, not eating or drinking, and eventually dying from starvation and dehydration. The monument itself is pretty awesome, but there is also a vault in the floor under a great big stone where the mausoleum for the royal family is and this is where his body lies.




After the churches, we had lunch at a little cafe in the square and then walked to the Legermuseum. This was a museum that portrayed Dutch army and munitions history since the medieval times. I've never seen so many weapons in all my life. But it showed this really interesting progression of warfare and weaponry from medieval to modern time, and the most striking thing I think that I realized was the shift during the Industrial revolution from artistic, beautiful weapons that were unique to the owner, and mass produced weapons of destruction. Don't get me wrong, all these weapons were made for the purpose of killing, but I found it fascinating to consider who the people behind these gorgeously crafted weapons were as opposed to the mass-produced guns of today which are issued to soldiers rather than created for them.









It was a pretty cool museum, and if you have a student card, you get in for free.

From there we walked to the Royal Delft Works, which had a lot of beautifully hand painted ceramics that none of us could come close to affording.

Rob and I left shortly after so that we could make it in time to head with Jos and Anne to their son Raymond's for birthday coffee and cake. Raymond is a volunteer at the Diergaarde Blijdorp (the Rotterdam Zoo) and has promised us a personal tour through the Zoo next Wednesday. I plan to take my drawing stuff there and do some sketching.