Motored down to Delft

After a quick run to the store this morning for milk,  it had gone sour so tea without milk and leftover pasta for breakfast rather than oatmeal, we headed off down the canal to Delft.  We had to wait for bridges rather more than usual today, tying up twice and mooching around at one of them, only to have a big old barge pass us doing about 5 knots in a 3km/hr zone. Quite something watching him go through a bridge at that speed!!!

Delft is, well, it's another Dutch town.  There is a surprising unity of style throughout the Netherlands, at least in older buildings.  They have a couple of gigantic churches.  The architecture here is generally quite human scaled, and even the big churches are decorated and kind of busy but in a homey, almost craft-like way, rather than trying to intimidate or inspire awe or overwhelm with Barroque-ness (gag), they seem, well friendly.  The houses and streets as well, designed for people.  Not cars, or businesses, but for people.

I don't know if you can see, but there are flowers painted around the edges, and vines and little windows like in houses way up at the top of the arches, like someone might open them up, peer through and wave. 

There's coots and baby coots in the middle picture, and the dog is called 'The Blue Dog'!

We had a wander around town, which was cool, home of Vermeer and my goodness but they have some big churches in this country.  Very touristy, haven't seen that in a bit, but we wandered off into neighbourhoods as well.  Came back to the boat mid afternoon, I was desperate for a nap, I haven't slept well the last couple of nights.  We wandered out again, to check out the university on the other side of the canal. The university area had some interestingly named streets....

and there were a number of displays up of students' work, like this one regarding the movement of tectonic plates.   The black line in the middle of the stripe on the ground was exactly 52º, 00',00" on Jan 1, 2018.  And the tectonic plate that the Netherlands rests on is moving at 1.5cm per year, so the blue strip displays the movement of 52º from 1992 to 2024.  Cool, no?

We also went by the Royal Delft factory, which charges a fee to visit, so we won't be bothering, but it was kind of cool to see.  They had a pillar with work on it outside, so there's that.  All the painting work at the factory is painted by hand, so they say.