The Hague’s Binnenhof (inner court) sits next to the Hofvijver (court pond), and began its life in the 1200s as a gothic palace for the counts of Holland – part of the holy roman empire at the time. These days it houses the Prime Minister’s office and the general meeting rooms of both houses of parliament. The new parliament is seated, but we’re still waiting for the government to be announced. It takes a while to reach agreement between the many parties with seats in parliament :-).
The tower is Delft’s Oude Kerk (old church, from the 13th & 14th centuries depending which part) as seen from the Prinsenhof, original location of the House of Orange which now bases itself in the Hague as the seat of NL’s heads of state. Below are various shots from Delft’s city center as well as the Royal Delft (porcelain) museum.
Delft Technical University’s Botanic Garden had a nature-themed sculpture exhibit placed in strategic locations along the paths and beds, when I visited Delft during the first week of my lovely stay-in-NL vacation last month.
I made it back down to Delft for a day trip last weekend. The Prinsenhof Museum is closed for long-term renovations, so I’ve got only external shots of this compound. Starting with the 80-years war, it housed the Orange-Nassau house, which later became NL’s royalty. Funny, since I’ve been living in a constitutional monarchy, how much harder it is to find legitimately royal-type shots than, say, France, which hasn’t been a monarchy since the 1800s. Or Thailand, where it’s fairly visible as we’ll demonstrate in some future posts.
Technically this probably isn’t urban, but it’s such a busy waterway near Europe’s largest port that it feels urban. This is the view looking downstream (towards Rotterdam and the North Sea), from the bridge I biked over as noted in the prior post.
The story behind these two photos above & below is that on the day I’d booked a pre-paid hotel for myself in the lovely Noord-Brabant town of Bergen Op Zoom, I awoke to find that the trains which normally run regularly between A’dam Centraal & Vlissingen (both of which we’ve shown you in the posts linked there) were stopping at Dordrecht. This was due to overhead power lines being out on the bridge over the last big-water crossing in southern NL before the border w/BE a bit further south. All the options being offered included many connections as we did a loop east and then back west, so I said “f-it, I’m sure I can bike from Dordrecht to the next train station south of the water, pop my bike back on a train there, and then continue to Bergen Op Zoom as planned. I mean, after all, it’s not like the bridge is out, and this being NL, there’ll be at least an adequate bike lane and route all the way in.” As demonstrated in the photos below, it was possible, and by the next day I was able to take the train straight through from Vlissingen home to A’dam. ‘Twas fun and felt rather adventurous, if I do say so myself…Later on I realized that Zevenbergen, to which I biked, was actually farther away than the station at Hoge Zwaluwe (I wonder if at least Sam will bother and have time to map-search these places, hmmm…), but had I known and biked there instead, I’d have missed these lovely canals and farmlands above and below, and just been industrial all the way except some of Dordrecht city which was often quite pleasant.
Since this is the main highway connecting all the largest Dutch cities and ports including Rotterdam to the largest Belgian cities and ports including Antwerp and Brussels…well, as you see it’s a pretty long and busy bridge. Still fun, though loud. There was a gas station on the other side where I biked on up and rewarded myself with an iced coffee from the counter of a franchise whose name is common.
(so much world, so little time....) 