After touring the Van Gogh museum and returning to the hotel, Sam took a rest while I headed to the lobby for an espresso, some Bruges chocolates, and to test my "cake." I was a little hesitant because I have never indulged in marijuana and didn't want to make a fool of myself--who knew how I was going to react to this soft drug. I had an interesting conversation with the young hotel clerk (very hip and nice--probably the son of the owners) and he was very intrigued (or incredulous?) by my experiment.
I decided to only eat a small piece--not even a quarter slice, as listed on the package instructions. And every 15 minutes, the young man looked over at me and said, "Do you feel anything yet?" I didn't--and just continued reading and relaxing. Eventually, Sam came downstairs and our tour buddies began drifting into the lobby, returning from their afternoon adventures.
It was obvious that I wasn't the only one who had been eating "cake." Bud, the guy from Cape Cod, had already been snacking and looked a little bleary-eyed. And the big, burly retired Brooklyn cop came downstairs wearing an earring! Sam and I hadn't really mixed with any of the group outside of group events so we joined several couples and Bud for a nice dinner that evening. "Do you feel anything yet?"
We walked to a lovely restaurant, Bicken, and sat outside; it was a very nice evening and we had a lot of laughs. Closest to the camera are Mike and Peggy from Sonoma, CA; then Pam and Larry from Brooklyn; Bud (waving) from Cape Code; and Herman and Kay from Youngstown, OH.
As you can tell, this was a fairly fancy place (expensive)--small portions of food but displayed beautifully.
And by this time, I was feeling something--very, very giggly--more so than usual. And at one time, Sam leaned over and said I was pretty quiet (which is VERY unusual). Besides the intermittent giggling, I remember thinking (again) that I did not want to make a fool of myself. And I was having trouble following the conversations going on around me. By the time someone made it to the end of a sentence, I had lost track of the beginning of it! Very strange.
I tried to explain this to the lobby clerk when I returned--because he caught my eye right away and asked, "Do you feel anything yet?" I said that I was really giggly but that could've been because I was drinking wine. His eyes widened and he blurted out, "You were drinking wine, too!?!" "Was I not supposed to?" I asked...
I had complained that my sleep the previous night was like being in a Dali painting--I believed I never slept because objects were constantly flying around in my brain. This night--after eating some "cake"--I again believed that morning arrived without any sleep. But as I lay in a comatose state, the objects (or thoughts) were lazily floating around in my brain and I was entirely calm. The next day, I handed the rest of my "cake" to Bud. I knew it was in good hands...
Ahhh, a nicer hotel than the one we left in Delft this morning. Sam and I checked into room 32, which was 32 steps up. This hotel, I believe, is made up of more than one building, with its meandering hallways and varying stairways. I also found an engraved stone on the front of one which gave its building date as August 31, 1809.
The room was smallish, like a Paris hotel, but it was very modern and the bathroom, very nice. That's always one of my most important criteria. And, of course, the window opened!
I was also very happy about the espresso machine in the lobby/breakfast room--2 euros a cup and worth it.
The balcony at the back of the lobby overlooked a peaceful and lush courtyard. Supposedly, you can see a flock of parrots flitting in and out of the trees. We did hear them--not sure that I was seeing them because they were very fast. Sam got a photo but...this looks like a pigeon to me...
After unpacking and sitting awhile on the balcony, we met the group for an orientation walk around our neighborhood while headed to tonight's group dinner at a Indonesian restaurant--very popular in Amsterdam.
After a lovely breakfast this morning, we met our local tour guide, 23-year-old Quirine ("Call me Q"), a student at the Technical University here in Delft. She tells us that the first canal was dug in this area in the 1100's when farmers needed to "unwater" the ground and make the land secure. This brought more and more people to Delft and the city grew.
Before we set off --Sam with a dull headache (after her fall) and me, a stomach ache--Q provided some basic information. Presently, there are 17,000 students studying at the universities in the cities. Delft is mainly known for the painter Johannes Vermeer and as the second largest beer producer in Holland (Haarlem is first).
The names of the streets relate to what happened on those streets: for example, Het-raam, the window where cloth is stretched and Verwersdijk, the dyke where cloth was painted. The more windows in your home, the more taxes you paid. This was how the rich bragged about their wealth but for the poor, who sealed their windows, it created bad health conditions.
We walked by the smallest house in Delft, which was the residence of the town doctor. This tiny house is only three meters wide (approximately ten feet) with two doors: the taller, more decorative one was for the royals and the other door in those days (the one into which the guy in red with the bike is entering), for the rest of us. Q says this house recently sold for 400,000 euros or around $540,000.
We were headed to the Old Church, or Oude Kerk, and Q pointed out its spire, which for 150 years was the tallest in Delft. It's not an optical illusion that the spire is leaning; it is built on an unstable foundation standing above a filled-in canal. But it would certainly make a good navigating point when trying to figure out where we are when wandering around town. (More about this church in another post.)
After visiting the Old Church, Hilbren and Q led us to the Vermeer Center for a break: coffee, tea, and Stroopwafel (a caramel wafer cookie, very good!) served by the ladies working at the center. (This museum was not part of the tour so Sam and I returned after lunch to walk through it and study the history and works of Vermeer.) Q still had more places to take us this morning.
The weather had turned from cloudy to sunny during the morning and we saw a lot of lovely street scenes. Who can stop taking photos of these beautiful canals??
Our Delft hotel room, as promised by Hilbren, was strangely decorated. Not only that, it also had a strange layout, due to the age of the building, I'm sure, and would become an accident waiting to happen.
Our beds sat on a level three steps up from the main part of the room, one which was very large compared to 90% of hotel rooms in Europe. Sam says she remembers thinking "oh no" when we first entered; and we would soon agree that people our age don't need to navigate additional steps, especially in your hotel room!
Long story short, Sam missed the last step after choosing her clothes for the day and preparing to take a shower on our first morning. I saw her hit the floor--flat on her face--after I heard the noise of her hitting two desk chairs against a table by the far wall. A hundred things went through my mind! (We put her colored luggage strap on the first step after the accident. Duh!)
She suffered a dull headache for a day or two but fortunately, she didn't sustain a concussion, break her glasses, her nose, her wrists, or any other bones. But it was certainly very scary for both of us and we counted our blessings. I took photos of her face every evening, which showed how her eyes gradually took on the semblance of a raccoon!! We were very lucky.
PS - I took this photo in Amsterdam the night before we caught our flight home on September 7th (three nights after the accident on the morning of the 3rd).
Less than an hour after leaving the storm barrier, our next stop was the "cute and quaint" little university town of Delft--although not so cute as we entered the city since they're always digging and dredging along the canals, Hilbren explained. In fact, the English word "dig" translates to "delven" in Dutch, which (Hilbren suggested) became "Delft."
"The canals are filled with water lilies," Hilbren promised. But our hotel, he explained, would be the only Rick Steves' "back-door" hotel on this tour, and, therefore, a different experience. (Sam and I would definitely have another reason to agree with that the next morning--and not in a positive way.)
But at this point, he was telling us about the quirky owners--frustrated artists, he suggested, who have been redesigning each room with a motif matching the name of a specific tree. The name of the place, Hotel de Plataan, refers to the sycamore tree. Sam and I didn't check out anyone else's rooms--our room (#204, Platanus Hybrida, 42 steps up) appeared not to have been redone or upgraded yet--but we saw photos of some of the others in the lobby, plus tour members had various stories to report.
One had a Garden of Eden theme with an Adam and Eve mural, round bed with a red blush spread, and a walk-up tub. Another was Moroccan-themed with a plush purple bedspread and netting draped over the bed. Besides a fireplace, a luxurious whirl pool tub for two was encased in white tile and required walking up steps to enter it.
The hotel had a nice restaurant and bar and a cute courtyard with wooden tree-trunk-like tables. This photo (above) is looking across the courtyard into another one with the huge table lamp, which was even lit at night. As you can see, it was a very sunny and warm day on our arrival, always a treat.
It had been a long day, getting on and off the bus and filling our heads with many details about saving Holland from the sea, water barriers, floods, etc. I flopped on the bed as soon as I finished taking the traditional room photos--trying to ignore the busy murals surrounding us--and regrouped before Sam and I went outside to explore.
What a sweet place, this 17th century canal-side house; and room #17 had a large window overlooking the canal. We threw it open as soon as we walked in--what a huge place, even the bathroom.
Thirty-seven steps up to the second floor--we never used the elevator but always the stairs. At the bottom of the typical narrow spiral stairs was a tiny office with a public computer, tourist brochures, etc.
Rik at the front desk was very helpful, courteous, and animated; and he insisted we view an hour-long movie in the basement (we never even went down there) about the history of Bruges. He also excitedly told us about a free harp concert one evening at the St. John's Hospital complex (now a museum), which Sam and I did end up attending. The hotel had some rental bikes and at least one of our tour mates borrowed one for a nice ride one afternoon, which he said was fun.
The breakfast room had a nice spread served by a beautiful young lady who, someone said, had three kids! Unbelievable. Wish I had a photo of her. We liked it here!
Wow! Fancy. Our large--by European standards--room resembled a typical American business hotel, except that the windows opened (onto a very busy street, of course, running along the front of the hotel).
What happened to the Rick Steves' "back door" hotels? Although we're not complaining...
We eventually learned from our guide, Hilbren Buys, that it is harder and harder for Rick to find family-owned hotels in large European cities anymore. And many of our tour members were to agree during this trip that they preferred this little "problem."
