Monday June 23, Sightseeing in Delft,The Hague, and Scheveningen

Today we started with a nice breakfast at the hotel then hopped on our trusty coach with driver Gerard and tour guide Norbert.  Our first visit was to Delft, which is a beautiful medieval city.  It has many canals, cobbled alleys and bot Gothic and Renaissance houses and buildings.  We began our tour by visiting the De Delftse Pauw Pottery factory where we were given a tour of the factory and shown how they hand make and paint all their pottery.  It is a small operation that has been in their family for generations.  Their pottery is beautiful and many of us partook of the items for sale in their beautiful showroom.  We next visited the city center and saw the magnificent Old and New churches. The old church dates from the 13th century and the New one from 1381!  New?  It was back then!  So much history in this town.  We also saw the old city hall and had a chance to visit shops and have lunch.  This is a town I would love to spend more time in.

Next we were off to the nearby town of The Hague, which is the seat of government for the Netherlands.  We had a short tour of the governmental buildings then some of us visited a beautiful museum called Mauritshuis (Maurits House).  It was filled with many beautiful paintings. Even though it is a relatively small museum the art work on exhibition is wonderful as is the house.  As we left the haag we made a quick stop in front of the peace palace.  Beautiful!  Then on to the seaside town of Scheveningen where we had free time to wander the board walk, shop and have dinner.  Some of us were even bold enough to take off our shoes, roll up our pant legs and put our feet into the cold water of the North Sea.  After all this sightseeing we returned to our hotel where 14 of the group went to the bar, where Kelli had reserved a good sized area, and they played Phase 10 again.  I stayed in the room to update the blog and hopefully get a few pictures linked from my .Mac web page so that you all can see them.  I have tons of pictures but have only put a few up for viewing so you wouldn't get too bored.  

Thanks for stopping by.

Jennie