A side trip to Delft and Haarlem

Today we headed to Delft to check out the little town  and on the way back stop off in Haarlem.  The agent offered us a special unlimited first class travel throughout Holland for the day for the bargain price of €47 for 2 tickets…coach class round trip to Delft would have been €45 for 2.  Of course we took her up on the great deal!

The train ride was quite fun and we got to see a little of the country side.  I do love traveling by train but find it hard to keep my eyes open with the gentle rocking of the car. 





We saw a couple windmills along the way as well a lot of flower fields.

 

 

 

Tulip season has sadly passed but there were rows and rows of other flowers...even saw fields of heather.



I wasn't kidding yesterday when I said bikes
are everywhere...even in the canals

We arrived in Delft an hour later and began exploring this charming town...definitely a place we both decided we could spend a few weeks in just wandering the streets and sitting in cafes. 

First stop was to buy tickets for a canal cruise...Delft has 76 bridges and we saw 20 of them on the trip.

After the canal ride, we headed over to the town center and fell more in love with this quinessential Dutch town!  From the fish monger on the corner to the baker on the next to the cute and tacky tourist shops this is really a nice little town.  We didn't venture the 30 minutes out of town to visit the Royal Delft factory but saw some amazing old pieces in one of the in town shops...definitely held on to my bag because some of the pieces were over €5000 and no way was I paying that for something I broke!

Obligatory photo inside giant wooden shoes

On the ride back to Amsterdam, we stopped off in Haarlem for dinner and to take part in the time honored Dutch pasttime...sitting in a cafe watching the world go by...we can really get used to this!!


Haarlem in New York got it's name from Haarlem,  Netherlands when New York used to be called New Amsterdam.







Our dinner entertainment
















Canal...I think all the water throughout the country adds to the relaxed feel

LJ Coster...he claims to invented the moveable print

In this statue, he is holding a block of wood with letter "A" and pointing to say "I did this".

Windmill just outside of Haarlem











We made it back around 9:30 and after stopping off in the Executive Lounge for a little dessert and coffee, we called it a day...afterall there is more to see tomorrow!