Today, we wanted to explore some interesting areas outside of Delft. While we first thought we would drive to The Hague to see the museum (Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring has it’s home there) it turned out this painting was on loan to Japan! So we decided to bypass that stop and head straight to Kinderdijk, a World Heritage site containing the largest collection of historic working windmills.

A well know expression here is “God made the world, but the Dutch made the land” is demonstrated well at this site!

The day started out quite sunny as we had our breakfast, but as soon as we parked the car and began our hike out over the dykes, the rain came… and then the torrents came! At this point we were wet anyway, so we continued our hike until the sun decided to poke through!

We trudged our wet bodies back to the car, got our jackets off and hung them on the back of our seats and turned up the heat and fan to dry ourselves off! It didn’t dampen our spirits, and we were soon off to Gouda to explore this very old and historic town.

We parked the car close to the town centre and walked into the market square to start our exploring.

We had heard that Gouda had the longest church in the Netherlands and we found this not far off the square. My curiosity was piqued as its name was Sint Jan, or St John…just like my home church.

It truly is an amazing building and we felt inspired to go inside and have a look. Little did we know that it not only was the longest church in the Netherlands (over 100 metres), but it had the largest collection of 16th century stained glass windows in the world, with 72 in total. Two of these windows reach a height of 20 metres! They were truly remarkable!

One of the fascinating facts about these windows was that they were all taken apart piece by piece and stored in wooden crates at the early part of WWII, hidden in people’s homes, barns and even some in the sand dunes. At the end of the war, they were all returned and meticulously reassembled.

This church was a Catholic Church that with windows that survived the Protestant Reformation, with the support of the local city officials. Many others had all their windows destroyed., among other valuable items and works of art.

After our tour we decided to walk around the old town for a while. The buildings and canal ways were fascinating!

It was soon time to leave Gouda and head back to Delft and explore more of the old town before we are off tomorrow.

Our first stop was the Vermeer museum in Delft. While it does not hold any original Vermeer’s, it was fascinating in its depiction of all his known works (a little over 40 paintings in total) and where they are found in the world. Dan and I will be seeing a few in Amsterdam when we visit the Rijksmuseum. His painting, “Woman in Blue” is in Amsterdam, and we saw the story of how she was painstakingly restored using all modern technologies… quite fascinating.

Our visit there was a short one as the museum closed at 5. This gave us a chance to tour more of the old town of Delft and see it on a much more pleasant evening.

After a bit of a walk, we decided on an early dinner. We had chosen Bij Harry (with Harry) for our supper tonight!

We were definitely not disappointed. More Dutch fare with a flair!

After another hardy meal, we headed off once again to explore along the canals before dark descended… we had a huge meal to walk off!

Well it’s been another long, and fulfilling day. Time to get to bed and rest up for a fun day of exploring… tomorrow’s destination, Amsterdam. Until then!