Mon, Jul 11 - Vermeer

We got up at seven to clear skies!  At 8:30 we walked over to the train station and I asked the person at the  information booth where to go to catch the Delft train.  He pointed us to Track 2a  just as we had thought.   The bar code on our tickets let us through the turnstile and we found our track.  We bought a baguette with chicken, tomato, cheese, & cucumber to split and cappuccino and fresh OJ from a little booth and waited for our train.  At 9:04 AM right on the dot, our train arrived and we found two seats upstairs, facing forward and set off. 

The Hague

We passed through lovely farmland, past apartments with community gardens, canals with houseboats.  We stopped at Leiden, Den Haag (The Hague), and finally after just an hour, we pulled into Delft.

The train was pretty empty by then and we descended the stairs to the doors and nothing!!  The doors  didn't open!  There was a blue and a yellow button near the door and Bob punched the blue which did nothing.  We dashed to the other end of the car and again found closed doors!  The whistle blew and the train took off!  We sat down again, and fortunately a conductor come along and explained that in order to open the door from the in or outside, one has to push the Yellow button  (the Blue button closes the doors!).  The conductor told us the next station wasn’t far away and we could  just get off and return to Delft without paying for any more tickets!  We did just that and finally arrived in Delft.

Cheese Store

Delft City Gate 

Delft is a totally charming version of Amsterdam: much smaller, with 3-story buildings rather  than 5, less hustle and bustle, flowering lily pads in the canals (much less pollution).

We walked to the Grote Markt - the central pedestrian plaza, surrounded by Delft china shops, restaurants, and beautiful buildings.

  We found the. Vermeer Centrum Delft, a wonderful museum with copies of all of Vermeer’s work and a audio headset discussing each one, from a historical, technical, and artistic viewpoints.  There were really interesting exhibits about light, shadow, reflection, etc.  Really well done.

Our Gelateria

We returned to the plaza as we were feeling peckish and stopped in at Otlelli, a gelateria & espresso bar where we ordered a brie and salami panini and coffee and then had gelato to finish it off.    We walked over to the. Delft Botanic Garden and strolled  among their collection of exotic plants from all over the world.  It was getting late so we rushed back to the train station and just barely made the 2:54 and dozed back to Amsterdam.

Clean Delft Canals

After resting at our hotel, we set off at 6 PM for dinner at Gusto, the restaurant next to Tulip, our B&B of five years ago, and had a good dinner of Burrata salad that was excellent and then seafoods risotto for me and truffle ravioli for RRZ, pus a bottle of Sicilian white wine. 

Back in Amsterdam!

We walked back to our hotel, arriving at St. Nicolas Basilica next door just before an organ concert was to begin.  We paid our fee, slipped in to the. beautiful space of soaring arches, stained glass windows, and sat for an hour listening to gorgeous 19th century organ pieces played by Susanna Veerman.  Lovely finish to our visit to Amsterdam.

As we entered the hotel lobby we were warmly greeted by the charming Dutch  sommelier of Vermeer restaurant who remembered us from Monday night.