A View of Delft, Part the First
I've been in Delft for the past two weeks for work reasons but I was able to spend the weekend doing touristy things. I've got quite a few photos, but I need to pack this evening so I'm only posting a handful now. Maybe more later. I also had to take selfies for Corporate Communications, so I may be posting a link to that at some point.
This is from just outside my hotel. You can just about see the hotel on the left with black awnings over the doors. Having watched a few of these cars parallel park, I can't help wondering how often cars end up in the canal.
The Oostport which I got to run through when I went for an early morning run. This is the last remaining of the city's eight gates and dates back to 1400 (or so the photocopied information sheet I purchased from Tourist Information for €1,50 tells me),
There were eights on the shipping canal. I was a little dubious about its claims to be a shipping canal (despite the numerous swing bridges) because I never saw any ships on it until I was on the return leg of my run this morning and say a largish container barge going down it.
I'm not good on birds (either photographing them or identifying them). I thought this was a moorhen nest, but on cursory googling maybe its a coot? The information sheet tells me that the historic centre of Delft consists of eleven islands connected by eighty bridges (in a space, I think, smaller than is taken up by the present day university campus which is just south of the city). It's like Venice but with more bicycles and fewer gondolas.
William I of Orange of whom Delft makes a great deal of fuss. To be fair he sounds like a pretty impressive figure and not just because of his inner thighs. I recall some historian commenting on a picture of Charles II in a very similar pose, that one should respect his inner thighs. This is his mausoleum in the Niewe Kirk (so called because it is a young whippersnapper of a church being merely around 700 years old). I suspect I will have more to say about William I in a later post.
This is a detail from the Stadswaag (municipal weighing house) where, once upon a time, all goods exceeding 10 pounds had to be weighed.
There was a matching picture on top of the municipal butter market. The two buildings are basically next to each so I suppose that is why they are so similar in design, not that there is anything particularly similar about butter and weighing things.
This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/147558.html.
This is from just outside my hotel. You can just about see the hotel on the left with black awnings over the doors. Having watched a few of these cars parallel park, I can't help wondering how often cars end up in the canal.
The Oostport which I got to run through when I went for an early morning run. This is the last remaining of the city's eight gates and dates back to 1400 (or so the photocopied information sheet I purchased from Tourist Information for €1,50 tells me),
There were eights on the shipping canal. I was a little dubious about its claims to be a shipping canal (despite the numerous swing bridges) because I never saw any ships on it until I was on the return leg of my run this morning and say a largish container barge going down it.
I'm not good on birds (either photographing them or identifying them). I thought this was a moorhen nest, but on cursory googling maybe its a coot? The information sheet tells me that the historic centre of Delft consists of eleven islands connected by eighty bridges (in a space, I think, smaller than is taken up by the present day university campus which is just south of the city). It's like Venice but with more bicycles and fewer gondolas.
William I of Orange of whom Delft makes a great deal of fuss. To be fair he sounds like a pretty impressive figure and not just because of his inner thighs. I recall some historian commenting on a picture of Charles II in a very similar pose, that one should respect his inner thighs. This is his mausoleum in the Niewe Kirk (so called because it is a young whippersnapper of a church being merely around 700 years old). I suspect I will have more to say about William I in a later post.
This is a detail from the Stadswaag (municipal weighing house) where, once upon a time, all goods exceeding 10 pounds had to be weighed.
There was a matching picture on top of the municipal butter market. The two buildings are basically next to each so I suppose that is why they are so similar in design, not that there is anything particularly similar about butter and weighing things.
This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/147558.html.