South Holland Cities

Rising above the plain of the plains.

Delft

• A housing block cunningly disguised as a ship, in Kinderdijk.
• Arched bridge.
• Crazy nested motorways.
• Truss.
• The grass hut where we would be staying in Delft.
• Like half a caravan, cut off and burried.
• A male pheasant who shared our plot, and would get within 1 metre of us, hoping for scraps.
• The female.
• And the chicks.
• One of three herons living in the canal.
• And the second one. The third was camera shy.
• Nearby fields, showing the normal style, identifiable from the air. Rectangle upon rectangle of fields, surrounded by drainage canals, with the animals marooned on their rectangle. Fences are not needed here. Narrow bridges connect the fields, often with a gate over the bridge, standing strangely proud without needing any fence around them.
• Wild geese taking a rest in a field.
• Oyster catchers, one of the ever-present wading birds.
• A rabbit among the pigeons.
• Canal tunnel.
• A coot chick right beside the path. The parents bravely approached to defend their chick from the photographers, even though we were over 100 times their size.
• Bridge on the canal branch.
• A heron beside the canal, who seemed much less afraid of humans than most. He allowed me to get 4 metres away, then carefully maintained that distance.
• When he started to head too close to the road, we left him alone, but what a great shot.
• Dried resin oozing from a wound in a tree.
• The boat club.
• A welcoming door.
• Cantilever bridge on the main route along the canals of Delft. These are not ornamental, and will open when a boat needs to pass underneath.
• Lion door adornment.
• And its monkey counterpart.
• Back road.
• Arched bridges over the Delft canals - most of this design are around 300 years old. The cars are parked along the edges of the canal, requiring a reverse/parallel parking manoeuvre. They have to learn to execute it flawlessly to avoid falling in (which does happen sometimes), and to be the correct distance from the edge to allow them to get out without stepping off the edge.
• Water lilies.
• And more bridges.
• The Delft town gate, dating from 1400.
• The towers apparently are from 1514, and are more like the other gate towers in the Netherlands.
• Not all bridges still open, particularly the old ones. But canals are a right of way, so they shall be used anyway.
• Floating houses. These are like a boat base, with a house built on top. They are designed to be like permanently moored barges, and can only work properly on canals where the water flow is low, and never floods.
• Coots.
• Back doors opening directly onto a canal, with just a couple of inches of clearance over the water. "I'll just pop out the back for a momaaaaaah!"
• A popular child carrier for bikes; little more than a wheelbarrow, where three or more small children can be put at once.
• The impressive 108 metre tower of the Nieuwe Kerk, second tallest church tower in the Netherlands, with the church built between 1383 and 1510 (so much for being 'new'), and the tower 1872.
• Bells on the tower.
• The miniature tower inside the tower.
• Winding stairs up the tower. There is only one staircase, and virtually no passing space, so you have to get up close and personal with anyone going the other way.
• The original bells, now corroded too much to maintain their tone.
• Clockwork.
• Not orange.
• Clock face. From the back. Is it still a face?
• Ladders to bizarrely placed doors on the roof.
• Gargoyle.
• Pinnacle.
• Delft from above, with Den Haag in the distance.
• Den Haag skyline.
• Maria van Jessekerk.
• Rotterdam skyline.
• Oude Kerk, the old church, from the 1200s.
• Delft's working windmill, running in low wind conditions.
• Delft's main market square, with the town hall.
• Town hall.
• Along with the Delftware (the blue painted pottery at the bottom) are the ever present clogs. These are a tourist thing, that are also used by (so we were told) 1 million Dutch people, typically as a shoe to wear outside in the garden. They claim to be orthopaedic, and not just something for tourists, but do need a lot of getting used to, since they prevent most foot motion.
• An old building that attracted my attention.
• Door to .... the rat's basement?
• Stopping for a barrel of wine on the canal. It is beautifully parked though, isn't it?
• Ornate door.
• The 1895 water tower, like a cross between a windmill and a castle.

Rotterdam

People know Rotterdam for many reasons, such as the tollerant Dutch attitude towards the drug and sex industries, and sexual orientations. Others know it for its experimental architecture. We know it best for its starring role in Jackie Chan's 1998 film "Who Am I?".

• Welcome to Rotterdam.
• The stupidly named Millennium tower (the millennium was 8 years ago, time to tear it down, right?), second tallest building in Rotterdam.
• Town Hall.
• Bikes in front of the Sint Laurenskerk, by the Blaak station (which features for about 1 second in the film).
• Weird tubular building by the Blaak station.
• The famous Kubus cube houses, which host one of the impressive fight sequences in the film.
• These bizzare cube shapes are each a self contained, three storey house, built point downwards, seemingly defying logic. They were completed in 1984.
• The courtyard where the fight takes place, filmed from above.
• Cube alleyway.
• The houses are surprisingly spacious, but need custom furnature that fits the sloping, tapering walls. They can house up to 5 people. At a push.
• Attic room.
• A nearby harbour, with large sailing barges (the slats on the side are folding keels for use when sailing in open water). The bridge in the background is used in the film as the introduction to Rotterdam.
• Portable transport on a barge.
• The building on Boompjeskade, where the main fight scene takes place on the top, then Jackie slides down that crazy sloping roof. I don't care if he did have a safety line when they filmed it, it still looks extremely scary, ridiculously steep, and a very long way down.
• The café where Jackie sits after arriving in Rotterdam, and is found by the henchmen. Turns out it's not a café after all.
• Chinese-roofed bandstand.
• The Euromast, tallest building in the Netherlands, at 185 metres.
• Bridge opening to let a barge through a canal.
• The bridge used for the finale in the film.
• Floating Chinese restaurant.
• A ship called the Mircea, built in 1938 as a training vessel for the Romanian navy, of all things.
• Figurehead.
• The map showed a harbour with large sailing ships. I disagree.
• One of the famous coffee shops we had heard so much about. Most are quite silent about what happens inside. This one was quite blatent. These are the only places that are legally allowed to serve marijuana in the Netherlands, either as cigarettes or cakes.
• Old Rotterdam, some of the little that survived World War II.
• The old windmill, dating from 1727.
• The old bridge is out, and now it's time for us to be too.

Den Haag

Den Haag is called The Hague in English (presumably because they couldn't speak Dutch, and just read it as they saw it - it's pronounced Den Hahch, where ch is like a gentle German ch from 'Bach'). It is the seat of government and home of the monarchy, and yet for legacy reasons it is not the official capital - that honour is bestowed on Amsterdam.

• Massive bike park in Den Haag centre.
• Transport for the lazy tourist who has too much money.
• They are not shy about their sexuality (our shops usually display only lingerie in the windows, and do not usually say what they sell on the outside signs). They even use education about how to use these things, as a way to reduce teenage pregnancy; who needs a boy when they have a good toy?
• Appropriately nearby.
• An old church called a new church.
• Den Haag takes a different approach with its town hall.
• The ministary of justice building. Much better.
• The hunk mill. Like the village bicycle.
• The Binnenhof, houses of parliament.
• Pollution in the water.
• The old gatehouse, and artificial lake, with even more artificial iceberg. It even floats, and moves around the lake.
• The gatehouse from the old town, which has served as a prison for most of its life.
• Just because you're a prison, doesn't mean you shouldn't be stylish.
• Stocks at the prison.
• Huge sand castle in the city centre, replicating well known buildings and sculptures.
• The old town.
• An old inn now known as 't Goude Hooft.
• Building in the old town.
• Signs of the old trade routes.
• The royal palace.
• Vredespaleis.
• The pier.
• You might need the urban dictionary to understand this, but it's funny for a Brit.
• Starfish in the sea life centre.
• Octopus.
• Mudskipper, a freaky little fish that can walk on its fins as if they were legs, and breathe while out of the water. The fact that it looks like something from the evolutionary chain of a billion years ago is just pure coincidence.
• Rays.
• RayMouth.
• Shark.
• Catfish.
• Blowfish.
• Turtles, the first I have ever seen (and I mean en-GB turtles, not tortoises or terrapins, which I have seen plenty of). Pity they have to be in a tank.

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