A Day in Delft

Today was a national holiday in The Netherlands.  So, with all of us out of school and work, we decided to make an afternoon trip to Delft.  That sounds, big, but actually, it is only about 25 minutes from our village.  Since we were going to Delft, we thought we should stop off at IKEA and return a couple of items that we ended up not needing (and buy a few items we did need).  That was our only mistake of the day!  Apparently, when there is a national holiday, everyone does the same thing...run errands (or go to the beach)!  We parked our car, with amazing ease, and walked inside with our returns.  The entire place was packed!  And when I say packed, I mean packed. I think half of Holland was there! We took a number and proceeded to wait for our turn.  It only took about 30 minutes (not so bad). After we finished, we decided to skip on our shopping so we didn't have to wait in this line. (photo courtesy of Macy)

​Instead, we went upstairs and had lunch and left as quickly as we could.  ​ We then drove about a mile and a half to the Museum Prinsenhof  Delft   https://prinsenhof-delft.nl
​This museum was a bit of a mixed bag.  The permanent exhibit was primarily about William the Silent, Prince (and ruler) of the family of Orange.  However, it also had a substantial visiting exhibit about the history of rock and roll musical events in The Netherlands.  It was a bit strange to walk into this amazing historical building (which was originally built as a monastery) and find the first exhibit was all about rock concerts and such. So, we quickly skimmed through it and moved onto the historical portion of the facility.

One really unique feature was the animated technology.  At various locations throughout the museum, they had projectors on the ceiling and they would project white silhouettes of various people from the time period of William the Silent (1572-1584).  They were moving images and if you went too fast, you could have easily missed them.  Here are a few examples.  The first image is of the Prince that was shot in the castle.  He was standing next to the location of the bullets in the wall (see the framed box) where he was shot.  The framed box shows the actual bullet holes. In the next frame, it is showing where the shooter was hiding.  Then, you see the king appear, just before he was shot.  In the fourth and fifth pictures, it was showing the king in his bedroom/study and the other two were various people that were part of the family or the court.  This extra element made things really come alive.  The last image was a colored projection that was an actual talking video.  The man in the video worked in the Royal Delft factory and was talking to you as though he was recruiting you to a job in the factory.  It was entirely charming!

As we made our way through the museum, we got to see many paintings, a lot of historical artifacts related to the time of the monastery and from the time when the royal family was in residence (starting in 1572).  The bullet holes were shot into the wall in 1584, 435 years ago!  There was quite a large collection of delft pottery and tons of amazing architecture.

After leaving the museum, we popped around the corner and walked to the church.  We wanted to see if we could also visit it (even though is was nearing dinner time).  The church did have a small entrance fee (which included 2 churches, the old and the new).  Since it was kind of late, we decided that a visit to the churches would take too long, so we would plan a return trip for that.  

To get back to our car, we had to walk back by the museum. Here, we realized we hadn't stopped in the castle gardens that were a part of the museum.  We had seen some white crosses in the inner courtyard garden from one of the castle windows and we thought we should check it out before we left. The outer garden was a lovely English garden that would have been incredibly spectacular in the spring.  We saw evidence of a large collection of tulips (now no longer in bloom).  As we went to the inner courtyard garden, we passed through a narrow brick archway and into the area with all the white crosses.  HOWEVER, as we looked a little closer, much to our chagrin, we discovered this was part of the rock and roll visiting exhibit inside!  If you look closely, you may see that the crosses contained the names of deceased musical artists that included the likes of Elvis, Mama Cass Elliot, Amy Winehouse, Prince, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Curt Cobain, Freddy Mercury and many more!  It was odd to say the least.  But, we used this beautiful backdrop to capture a few pictures of us together and then reminisced about the artists from the courtyard and played songs on our phone all the way home.  P.S. The girls weren't overly impressed with the selection of songs we played....LOL!  All in all, it was a fantastic day and we wish you could have been there with us!