The Netherlands

We stayed in The Hague in The Netherlands, which (random fact) is actually the capital of the country.

The hotel was the nicest we stayed in, one of the cheapest, and it even included breakfast. I missed this hotel (a lot) when we moved on to our London hotel...but I'll get to that in the London post.

We only had one day in The Netherlands, but we made the most of it. We started out our day in Delft, which I would describe as the quintessential Dutch town. It has quaint narrow streets with little shops, canals with bridges arched over them and houses built right on the canals with doorsteps just a couple inches above the water level.

I'm thinking these people deal with regular floods...

This is Jason and I in the Delft city center with the "new church" in the background.

We were going to the Royal Delft factory (on foot) and got caught in a sudden rainstorm, so we ducked under a tree and I took this picture to memorialize it. I'm pretty sure that's one of the buildings of the university in Delft.

We started our tour of the Royal Delft factory and learned how the pottery is made. Royal Delft has been around since 1653, but only acquired the "royal" part of its name in the past century when it was granted the title by the Dutch royal family. You can check out the Royal Delft website if you'd like to see the kind of pottery they make.

As part of our tour, we got to see a painter who was hand painting a piece of Royal Delft pottery. I thought it was pretty amazing that in 2013, they still hand paint pottery. I guess that explains the price... If the painter makes a single mistake, the piece is ruined and can only be sold as a "second", which is noted by taking a chip out of the maker's mark on the bottom of the piece of pottery.

Taking the factory tour at Royal Delft literally means that you get to tour the factory. We were on a self-guided tour and simply told to "stay within the yellow lines". Pretty trusting, considering the factory is filled with expensive pottery.

This shows the progression a piece of pottery goes through before it's ready to be sold.

Here you can see pottery in various stages of drying.

And this is where they store all the molds for making the pottery.

This is us outside the factory. In Delft, it had finally cooled down below 90 for the first time on our trip (not an exaggeration), so I was able to pull out the long sleeves and cardigans I had packed and that were taking up precious space in my backpack!

Royal Delft has been in this factory since about 1900. Before it was known by the name Royal Delft, it was called "De Porceleyne Fles", which you can see on the front of the building.

We left the factory and stopped by one of the larger canals in Delft to take a picture.

We hopped on a train in Delft and decided to go to Amsterdam...because...we felt like we should at least be able to say we were in Amsterdam. We walked around a big block near the train station and saw lots of interesting things, including a shop that sold "magic mushrooms". We decided it was best to keep moving past that shop...

This is pretty much the only picture we took.

Just outside the central train station in Amsterdam, there was a bike parking ramp. I wonder what it's like when everyone gets off work in the evening and is trying to get their bike? Is it Amsterdam's version of a traffic jam?

Back in The Hague, we stopped by the International Court of Justice, housed in the "Peace Palace".

The building is celebrating it's 100th anniversary. Unfortunately, it's not really open to the average tourist, but the outside looks cool.

This is a church in the center of The Hague that we walked past to get back to our hotel.

And as we were leaving The Hague the next day, we had a little predawn walk through Chinatown.

We took an early morning train to the airport...and we were headed to London!

If you missed any of my previous posts, make sure you check out what we did in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich, and Luxembourg!