Delft for the day.

A Day in Delft.

The famous old pottery town of Delft certainly lived up to all expectations when we visited there today.

The town hall at the end of the square in Delft

We managed to get a full coat of primer/undercoat on the boat yesterday and that needed a couple of days to harden before sanding, so we became tourists for the day and joined several hundred similar souls exploring the wonders of Delft.

Famed for it’s blue and white pottery, which is sold in every conceivable variation, (including salt and pepper shakers in life size erect penis’s made out of white pottery decorated with the classical blue details) even we bought the stock standard mementoes of our visit like a blue windmill plate to hang on the wall.

In an upstairs gallery of one of the pottery shops, they had antique Delft hand painted tile pictures, scenes of old Dutch villages that were absolutely stunning, and so were their prices. You needed 5000 Euro to get past go for most of them.

Anna pushed the boat out and bought a 5 Euro plate, but she is still genuinely happy with the 15 Euro pair of framed tiles she found in a second hand shop in Vlaardingen, which judging by the foxing (that’s museum speak) on the masking tape on the back, makes them approximately 40 years old.

I can tell those things, I am a museum professional you know. 

So, back to Delft.

Parking was a nightmare until we discovered the under ground parking building that would have put most NZ shopping malls to shame. It was beautiful and so clean you could have eaten your dinner off the floor, which was vinyl, not concrete.

Lunch in a charming restaurant followed by the Dutch equivalent of the coast to coast iron man challenge, climbing the 365 stone steps up a very narrow spiral staircase to the top of the bell tower of the anno 1383 church at one end of the market square. (Nieuw Kerk)

William of Orange and the rest of the royal family lie in the crypt here, he probably died trying to climb the bell tower, we almost had several coronary events ourselves and were eying up the crypts for our final resting place.

Image that, dying in the bell tower of an ancient church in Holland. At least we would have had a place to have the service.

The most interesting moments were when we met people who were on their way back down and there was virtually no passing room on the narrow stone spiral staircase and we had to try and flatten ourselves against the wall while the person coming down performed a variation of the lambada dance against you. 

I did say to one lady that, “I promise I won’t enjoy this”, which got a laugh.

But we made it to the very top and had the most spectacular view over Delft that made it look like on of those ceramic miniature model towns. 

Definitely worth the exertion.

Looking down like a seagull you get the perspective of all the canals criss-crossing the town with shops and houses all along the edges. 

What sort of genius designed these places?

Delft certainly left it’s imprint on us.