Delft and Den Haag

On Saturday we took a train trip to Delft and Den Haag (The Hague). Delft is a cute little Dutch city with several old churches and a central market square. (The Netherlands has a LOT of cute little Dutch cities with churches and markets.) It is the home of the painter Vermeer, and his “View of Delft” is one of his most famous works. We arrived in Delft in the morning before the town woke up, so it seemed very sunny and peaceful.

Like many Dutch towns in the western part of the country, Delft has many canals. Our home (Deurne) is in the east, and slightly above sea level, with no canals.
The central market square has a large, ornate town hall.
Delft is famous for production of “Delftware,” blue and white china that was first made in the 16th century. The market square is surrounded by gift shops selling Delftware, and offering Dutch photo ops for tourists.
One of the churches in town leans two meters to the side, which is impressive.
In the afternoon, we hopped back on the train and went to Den Haag. Den Haag is the seat of Dutch government, and houses many international entities too. We saw the international Peace Palace where international war criminals are tried, but it was not open for visitors.

We enjoyed walking around the city and seeing both historic and modern government buildings. Our favorite stop was the Mauritshuis, an art museum that focuses on the Golden Age of Dutch art.
It has three famous Vermeer works, I lost count of how many Rembrandt paintings I saw, and there were works from many other artists too. For some reason, Josh is obsessed with the paintings showing educational cadaver dissections.
(Josh carries the camera and takes most of the photos. When I download our photos to add to our blog, I’m sometimes dismayed to find what we have pictures of! I also find that photos of me outnumber photos of him about four to one…)

After a full day, we had supper and snoozed on the train back to Deurne.