Our next stay was in the town of Skiedam which is now a suburb of Rotterdam. On the way in the bridges are opened by the lock keeper and this lovely old one is worked manually by chains. Kevin and Arthur had fun trying to get it to work later.
We went sightseeing by bicycle around the old town which still has seven windmills which originally ground the grain to make the Jenever Gin for which the town is still famous. The museum is in the building of one of the original distilleries and of course we got to try some of the products of Skiedam.
There was a great display of bottles and historic labels. The labels were much more interesting than the modern ones although I don’t think the first one is a very good advertisement to drink Oude Jenever!!
Football fever has the Netherlands in its grip again and all over, orange is the colour. You will often see a whole row of houses decorated and shop windows full of orange.
On the day the Aussies played Germany in World Cup Soccer we went to the pub to see the match on the big screen.
We were almost the only ones there so we had the lounge seats to ourselves. The boys really enjoyed the game for the first half and the girls really enjoyed the soft seats but got a bit bored and left at half time.
Kevin and Arthur stayed to the bitter end and the publican felt sorry for them so he gave then some hats.
Next day they wore them for the match between Netherlands and Denmark which was at 1.30 pm and the pub was packed.
Enough of Soccer it is time to go, The bridge we go under is one of the widest lifting bridges I have seen so far. It consists of a foot path and a cycle way each side, a tram track on the right and two car lanes on the left.
DELFT
Next stop was Delft where we moored on the council jetties right at the edge of the old city.
While here we were entertained by the coots building their nests using the floating junk. 
The walk in is past a mixture of old and modern buildings and we were intrigued by this balcony attached by wires to the building.
The town has the usual centre square with the church at one end and the Town Hall at the other.
I visited the Royal Delftware shop which had truly beautiful china but much too expensive for me and of course too difficult to get home on the plane.
The MacDonalds here has free WiFi so we spent a few trips having a coffee or a big Mac. What we do for free internet!
DEN HAAG
The tram to Den Haag left from Delft every 10 minutes so we travelled there a couple of times. First we went out to the beach of Schaveningen. The Promemade runs alongside the water for a couple of kilometres with the hotels and shops along one side
and the cafes on the other which open onto the beach.
People were enjoying the sunshine and there were shelters all over the beach not to keep the sun off as we do but just to keep the wind off. There doesn’t seem to be any worries about melanoma over here and the solariums are popular also.
In the late afternoon we went to The Hague
and were told the Queen would be coming soon to open a sculpture park near by so we walked to where this was going to happen. The sculptures were at the end of a park which had a book and antique market going on so we spent a bit of time looking around.
The band was playing
The motor bikes heralding the queen.
and the queen arrived, no barricades here for Royal visits
ESCHER MUSEUM
Our other day of visiting Den Haag was to visit the Escher Museum.
I have always loved his work and it was really great to see so much of it and to buy a print of my favourite ‘Night and Day’. I think this one will also become a favourite, look at the two perspectives, one long distance and one up the mountain.
I love the beetles and lizards seen here.
The other thing I wanted to see in Den Haag was the Vermeer painting of ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ but that will have to wait for another day.
Back to Delft and then up the canal again to Aarlsmeer.
No comments:
Post a Comment