Delft
We headed to Delft for the afternoon. There was an option to take the bus after lunch to the factory that makes the blue pottery. I chose to explore the town instead. I did see the pottery in shops on the main square. One even had a bargain area where you could get chipped pieces for €600 to €900. I think the site pictured below is where the inn stood that Vermeer managed for his family after his father's death.
The market square is an enormous plaza with the town hall and the "new' church at either end.
The New Church was built in the fourteenth century and has been the burial place for the Dutch royal family since 1584. In both countries the bells in the towers, of both churches and secular buildings, are even more wonderful than I expected. It would have been worth the trip just to hear them. I think it was in Bruges where the town hall bells played "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" more than once while I was there. It was one of the ways that suggested to me that they want American and British tourists to know their continuing gratitude for fighting for them in two world wars.
The entrance to the royal crypt is in the chancel of the church. The black boxes and the display table house exhibits for visitors. The pulpit is in the middle of the nave.
The fish market was a block or so off the main square. As we broke for lunch our guide went to a shop on the street and demonstrated for us how to eat a raw herring.
Walking on past the fish market you approach the Old Church, which was built in the 1200s, but a wooden church stood there as long ago as 1050. The spire is seen below from a bridge over a canal. Vermeer and the physicist Leeuwenhoek are buried in the church.
The interior of the Old Church is much brighter than that of the New Church.
