Breakfast arrived at 8am and we were away by 8:25, a quick walk and tram saw us at Central railway Station by 8:50am. We found somewhere to buy our tickets to Delft, got them on special, first class tickets for the price of 2^nd class.

The train left at 9:11, on time, and we were in The Hague by 10:15am. We walked straight to the Tourist Info centre and got a map and the location of the main things to see. Firstly, we walked off to have a look at the Dutch Parliament House, a very old looking building with lots of style and character, then we walked around the back of it to The Mauritshuis.  This museum houses a collection of the Great Dutch Masters of the Golden Era, such artists as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck and Potter are displayed here.  The main draw card for the museum is Vermeer’s “The Girl with Pearl Earring”, but we took more time that is normal for us in this museum, the Dutch Masters are very special painters.

From there we set out to go and have a look at the Noordeinde Palace and its’ gardens, but somehow we must have taken a wrong turn and finished up in front of the Esher Museum. This is an amazing place to experience the works of a great artist and pioneer of many fields of dimensional geometry. His works are fascinating to say the least and the physical displays of the applications of his work were lots of fun. Displays here have fun with the idea of visual perception of geometric perspective and illusion. It’s a must visit for those with an Esher bent, and for all the inquisitive minds out there.

From here we did manage to find the Noordeinde Palace and its’ gardens. The palace was shut to visitors, and the gardens could have done with a bit of TLC.

Next was a walk up past the Royal Stables, (and by the smell of them they still keep horses there!!) to the Panorama Mesdag. Initially this is an ordinary sort of museum/gallery. It had the usual period paintings by a variety of artists, a special display of black and white photography from the late 1950’s was very interesting. The big surprise however was the Panorama. It is housed in a purpose built room that is about 35m diameter and 15m high. Around the walls there is a single continuous painting covering a 360 degree view of life in a small village, Scheveningen, back in 1881. It shows the coast and the various uses of the ocean and beach, from fishing to army patrols and general beach goers, it then goes into the dunes and shows Hotels and other building and keeps going around into the village, at every stage, and progressively, you see everything that was going on in a single day at the village and its’ surrounds. The foreground, between where you stand in a central rotunda and the canvas on the wall is an artificial beach/sand dune (so you can’t see where the bottom of the painting is) and the top of the painting is hidden by the roof of the rotunda.  It makes you perceive the view as really being there. The lighting for all this is provided by a glass roof, so as the time and weather conditions change so does the way the scenes are lit, giving it a further feel of reality. We both enjoyed it very much. A commentary of the scene was given in both Dutch and English, and was accompanied by all the right sound effects, down to the seagulls.

By this time it was getting a bit late, so we made our way back to the train station and finished our visit to The Hague, and began our ride to Delft.

Delft is a small medieval village that is most famous for its Blue and White hand painted china ware. It is all very expensive. After a short 10 minute walk from the train station we found ourselves in town. (We followed advice we had found on the web, and just walked towards the 2 towers on the skyline. These towers turned out to be the towers of the Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church, started being built in 1396) and the Oude Kerk (the Old Church, built around 1246). The 75m high tower of the Oude Kerk has a very distinctive lean to it. It has been leaning badly for over 100 years and has survived attempts by the locals to have it pulled down. The town is dotted with old buildings everywhere, some of which you can see how they have had additions made to them over the centuries, using different materials and building styles and techniques. We also visited a museum dedicated to Vermeer, on the site of the house in which he was born (that house no longer exists). Apparently Vermeer never left Delft, and during his lifetime only every completed about 60 works. (Some of the Dutch masters did this many commissioned works in a year). We were lucky with the rain, every time it started we were on our way inside, so we managed to stay dry all day.

At about 4 pm, we got a train from Delft to Amsterdam Central and then a tram back to the hotel, arriving in our room around 5:20pm.

We got all our laundry together, (yes I guess this is our dirty laundry story, LOL) and headed out to the laundrette. Once we had it in the machines (yes 2 machines) we went for a walk around the neighbourhood. As it happens we came across a bridge Deb had written off as us never getting to this trip. The Narrow Bridge, it is said that if you kiss in the centre of the bridge you will be together for life, so we did!!! The bridge and its surrounding area was the scene of a great amount of persecution of the Jews during WWII, and signs with short stories about what happened are posted around the area. We eventually got back to the laundrette and put our freshly clean wet cloths into a drier and then went around the corner to an Indonesian Restaurant for dinner while they dried.  45 mins later we were back, a nice dinner eaten and dry cloths ready for folding and taking back to our room.

We leave for Morocco tomorrow, and now we can pack at our leisure in the morning. We have asked the hotel to book us a taxi for 11:15am (check-out is at 11am).

Morocco may mean we can’t up date our blog as often as we have done so far. But we will be writing the blogs everyday, so when we can get a net connection we will upload all we have done and hopefully some pictures as well.

Take care everyone, us  xox