View from Above

Delft Town Hall from above
Originally uploaded by radix999

The weather was a bit cooler when I woke up this morning.. the sky was pretty overcast on the ride in and was a bit of a haze over the horizon.
The office was quiet too - Joeri was working onsite with a customer today (he does every thursday) and so it was just me in the office (Martin was supposed to come in today but didn't turn up). In the ProcoliX office it was much the same, with Bart being the only one there.
I continued to work on my plans for total WebGUI domination, and had a chat with Bart over lunch. Bart suggested a number of places we could go to visit on Saturday: Rotterdam, Den Haag, the beach - though we eventually decided we'd go spend the day in Amsterdam as he hadn't seen that much of it either so was keen to do so as well.
After work I headed to the Delft Markets - as Thursday is Market day. I also wanted to get a chance to check out the churches and climb the church tower.
I went to the Oude Kerk (Old Church) first - and this place was full of beautiful stained glass windows and is the burial place for a number of notable persons, including the famous painter Johannes Vermeer who was born and worked in Delft.

The same ticket to get into the Old Church also gets you in to see the Niewe Kerk (New Church) - so I headed there next. The New Church didn't have as many stained glass windows as the Old Church did, but it did have an elaborate burial for William The Orange and the rest of the royal family over the centuries.
After this I wandered around the markets below for a bit - they sell a lot of different stuff here - Fruit/Veg, Cheeses, Fish (including raw herring which is apparently a delicacy here tho I wasn't game enough to try), Clothes, Watches, and even Vacuum cleaner parts.
I wandered around the markets for a while, then saw people up the top of the New Church - which reminded me that you could climb it too. So I bought a ticket to go up and got directed to the base of the stairs.
It's a tiny little staircase going up - the steps are circular with a diameter of about two metres - so each step is barely a metre long and probably only 25-30cm on the outside (it tapers in the middle to about 5cm)
So there's a lot of climbing involved as you have to go up a long way. In addition the same set of steps are used to go down too so you have to squeeze by people or families going the other way too.
Once you're at the top though - what a beautiful view!
It's a shame there was a bit of a haze over the city, as I expect on a clear day you could see a long way - as it was I still had an impressive view of the city below and I went right around the whole tower taking photos for you all to enjoy.
After that I wandered back to my hotel where I had a shower and changed clothes. It was getting cooler by this stage, so a light jumper and long pants were called for. I met up with Joeri, Martin and Marijn for a beer first, then we headed to a restaurant they recommended called 'De V'.
Had a great time with them all, chatting about languages, people and everything else. The highlight of the night was when I explained that we had a Dutch guy working for us back in Perth, and when I said his name was Gooitzen they laughed and thought that an odd name even in Holland and they'd never heard it before.

Sorry Gooitzen! :)