Skip to main content

South of Netherlands and beyond, part vier!

It's getting harder to recall some of the things, so I have to keep on writing. It just happens to be a slower work day today than usual.

Delft was a one night stop over for us. The town itself could be perfectly described by words "quaint" and "little". There are a couple of churches, like most of ones we've visited they are devoid of decorations and sport high beam beautiful ceilings. There is a big central square with restaurants and souvenir shops around it. It fun to peruse those for a little bit, but most of them try to sell the famous blue Delft glaze in one form or the other. The square gets some traffic, so ignoring "tourist trap" vibe of most restaurants, you get a good "people watching" experience. The locals seem to eat and drink there as well. so it's not a bad sign. Being a "student town", as we were told by our wonderful B&B owner, the town is mostly quiet and dead in the mornings. After spending an evening and having leisurely stroll around the square and near about, we've decided to head for Bruges. Given that it was one of our main destinations for the trip, we've headed out from Delft around noon, hoping to spend a little more time in Belgium. Overall we've spend an evening and couple of hours in the morning in Delft, and I personally think it was enough to enjoy all it had to offer.









Drive to Bruges is a little longer, so while driving we were looking for spots to make a quick stopover and either see something, or at least have meal. One of the things we failed to realized is that there is no such thing a quick stopover in Europe. First of all, a lot of places offer something interesting to see. Second of all, driving through fast in Europe is near impossible, unless you keep yourself on the highway.

Take for example the city of Antwerp - the stopover that we've decided on. The streets in the center are narrow and one-way. We have actually ended up going the wrong way once and ending up on the street forbidding motorized traffic. With assistance of a nice fellow we managed to back down the street about half a mile, and turn into the right one, without causing a major problem for ourselves or pedestrians around us. Antwerp center is very nice, we've planted ourselves in the first cafe on the main square and ate our first Belgian Waffles, which were quite excellent by the way. Spending around an hour just sipping coffee, eating a waffle and watching (later strolling about) a flea market unfold right in the main square was one of the pure European experiences we try to do. Still, it added about two and a half, rather pleasant overall, hours to the trip. I'll reiterate: no such thing as a quick stop, and we kind of went with the flow with the idea.









Onto the Bruges in the next part. I think Bruges deserves a post of it's own.

Comments

Unknown said…
Ok, I need to add few words about Delft- I feel you are not being fair to this little town. It is very picturesque and overall reminded me of a younger sibling to the Amsterdam. Same beauty, similar canals, architecture and historical depth. You can even take a similar boat tour on canals in Delft. At the same time, the town is much cleaner, fresher, not full of oh so familiar aroma of coffee shops or girls in the windows.
We stayed at the wonderful very modern B&B - "Swaenenryck" in a historical building steps from the central square. Looking at the owners, we started talking about our own dream for retirement. She used to be a dietitian and he is an architect. The building divided into "His" and "Hers". "Her" portion is a B&B where she greets guests from all over the world and serves breakfast in the cozy dining room. "His" is an small office space with designer boards, architecture prints and small display of archaeological discoveries they encountered upon while remodeling the house. They even preserved the part of the wall that used to belong to the monastery.

Popular posts from this blog

Things you never cared to know about Mayonnaise

I have decided to start a new Rubric. Once a week I will write a post about a random subject. Having the subject coming out of MY head, it can be about anything. I constantly have a lot of random "Why?" and "How does?" questions floating around in my head. I will try to explain how I arrived to the subject at hand and promise to do diligent research on Wikipedia and provide you, the unfortunate reader, with either the interesting or unusual bits of info. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! In addition to that I have a slight fetish for trivia. The rubric will be called: Things you never cared to know about Today's topic is Mayonnaise . How did I arrive to that? As I was making breakfast in the morning, I decided that I wanted to take a pita pocket and stuff it with something. The pitas are usually fairly dry, and you have to toast them. I did not have Hummus or Babaganoush (GOD! I just love saying BA-BA-GA-NOUSHHHHHHHHH!) I put a little Mayo inside to soften it up. So, ther

Crazy ideas - UPDATED

Here's a crazy survey I thought off. If you had a time machine where would you travel first? Assuming the fact of course of universal invincibility. ----UPDATE---- As my brother mentioned, with time travel universally available getting rich schemes would be less than doable. My aim is more towards investigating great mysteries of history. Therefore: a. To the Big Bang b. To see an asteroid killing dinosaurs c. To see the exodus of Jews as it really happened d. Try to see if Jesus hubbub really happened e. Forget the past, I'd go to the year 2020 to see who winds World Series and place a bet accordingly. f. Suggested by Ilya . Back a day or to to purchase winning lottery ticket. e. Try to see if Atlantis existed. f. Travel to the future to see the explosion of our Sun. I am torn between the dinosaurs and the World Series. Please suggest the choices. Should I add Buddha and Muhammed to the list as well? From the curiousity stand-point. I still rather see the dinosaurs.

Olympics

I watched the opening ceremony over the weekend (after all these years i still rave about TiVo). Am I the only one who is intimidated by the sheer amount of human power involved in the theatrics? I was impressed and a little scared at the same time. Paranoia kicking-in. Did they do that on purpose, to show how much cheap labor they can employ, to pull almost anything off?