The Purple Penguin

One good thing about being in the office yesterday was I got cake! Birthday cake. Celebrating 40 years of action. After Joe had his meeting we headed out with some of his colleagues and had dinner. It was a very nice evening.

This morning the alarm went off and we both decided to just ignore it. Got up about half an hour later and got ready, so instead of the 0910 train we got the 1010 train. Turned out to be fine – takes about an hour from Amsterdam to Delft and it’s not a bad journey. We saw (out the train window) Harlaam (which is lovely), Leiden, Den Haag, and finally Delft. They are doing some work along the train line in Delft and it looks as if the canal has been drained – so the rather picturesque windmill by the tracks going into the station wasn’t so picturesque, rather more forlorn in the middle of building works!

Once out of the station and away from the building works, Delft was lovely. Still felt like I was about to be run over at any time, but it’s lovely. We walked to the Tourist Information building and grabbed a map, then headed out to walk along a canal. Came to the Old Church (Oude Kerk) and headed in to see the church and where Vermeer is buried. Lovely church, very plain. Then out and along the side streets and around to William of Orange’s residence which is now a museum. We didn’t go in there (Joe wasn’t too keen on more museums and he knew I was going to be dragging him into another church).

We then headed into the market – one of the oldest markets in Europe, still medieval and lovely old buildings. However the shops are all modern or tourist shops and the centre was a fun fair rather than market. We did go into the New Church (Nieuwe Kerk) and saw where the royals were buried. Then had some lunch before heading off to find the Royal Delft factory.

The pottery factory is a bit out of the centre but only a 10 to 15 minute walk out. Much like other pottery factories with hand painting! The museum is interesting; however the real attraction is the building. It’s all Delft building ware and lovely – the building itself was used as a showroom with all the different types of tiles on show. So the first bit you walk into is a huge entry way with tiles and a fully tiled staircase. Then the garden has what looks like an old cloister but is samples of columns and tiling! Really lovely and Joe took loads of photos (if they came out they’ll be on Flickr later!) So it’s worth going to see – not necessarily for the pottery, though that is nice, but the building.

Enjoyed walking around and learning the difference between what is sold in the tourist shops and by Royal Delft.  Of course the real stuff, hand painted and marked, is very much more expensive than the stuff just transferred on. We looked at the limited edition Christmas ornament and Joe said he didn’t want the stress at Christmas worrying it would fall off the tree!

By the time we finished all that it was about 4.30 so we headed back to the station and the crowded train back to Amsterdam (but not too bad – we had seats together!) Once back in Amsterdam I said I wanted Dutch pancake for dinner, so we just drifted along looking to see what was around and discovered The Pancake Bakery which serves wonderful pancakes (but molasses instead of proper maple syrup!) I had a bacon and apple pancake and Joe had soup, then we shared an apple pie with cinnamon ice cream – the ice cream was lovely!

Going to see what the weather does tomorrow and work from there.