Vermeer in Delft (“The Little Street”)
Weapons
Main square in Delft
Perspective art on the bricks
Same drawing from different angle
Tilting church
The view from our room in Amsterdam
Our hotel in Amsterdam, window under peak
The Eye on the Ij river
We were off early today catch a but just after 7 and a train just before 8, to get ourselves to the Netherlands. The trip was smooth but not exciting–we watched the landscape get increasingly Dutch (flatter, more canals, a few old-style windmills) and then changed trains in Amsterdam around 11 for our day trio destination, Delft. I had wanted to go because it was where both the painter Vermeer and the famous lens maker and mathematician van Leeuwenhoek were born, and also where Werner Herzog’s 1970s remake of Nosferatu was filmed. It was a beautiful little town with great, crooked alleys, canals, and a city gate that is still standing. It is really impressively picturesque and Dutch–even as the Vermeer aspect is really hyped up. There is currently one Vermeer painting in the town’s main museum, the Prinsenhof, called “The Little Street.” There are only 35 surviving Vermeer paintings worldwide, and normally none of them are in Delft, so it was a big deal that the painting had “come home,” and the exhibit was very elaborate, with all kinds of different theories as to which location Vermeer had painted, since most of the 17th-century town (except churches etc.) has made way to 18th- and 19th-century buildings. We also walked through the rest of the museum and learned about the history of the first William of Orange and about Delft porcelain. But there wasn’t really much about Leeuwenhoek, and we opted to skips the Vermeer center, where we would probably not have learned that much more, since we know quite a bit about Vermeer and his alleged methods from my spring class where we read Girl with a Pearl Earring. We did have a lovely lunch of broodjes (sandwiches) and croquettes (not easy the describe: meat in a cream sauce rolled in breaking and then fried) right in the market square. Then we walked around among the canals and cozy houses, and even saw these interesting modern art pieces floating in one of the canals.
Around 3:30, we decided to leave for Amsterdam, without stopping in The Hague, although I was really tempted to go see the museum where they do have the painting of the Girl with a Pearl Earring. But we did feel like settling in the hotel and finding our bearings around Amsterdam. We walked from the train station to our hotel, which was pretty fabulous for a “duty walk”–mostly canal side and densely packed, crooked 17th-century houses all over for the entire half mile! Then, the hotel itself was another super pleasant surprise, because it is right on a busy canal side square, or plein, and we look out from the fourth floor on a fabulous, bustling cityscape, basically out of an attic window, with the classic hook for pulling up bulky furniture etc. right above our window. We are very happy with our hotel!
We unpacked and rested a little, then ventured back out across the busy inner city with its canals and zillions of tourists, back to the train station and across a larger canal/river, the Ij (pronounced “I”) on a free ferry to the EYE film museum, where the conference had its opening reception. The museum space is really modern and cool, and we enjoyed the reception, although it was quite hot and noisy. We loved the free ferry ride, alongside probably a hundred bicyclists–they really dominate the city, and as a pedestrian, you better pay attention, because neither bikes nor scooters/Vespas take any prisoners! We left about nine, walked back through more throngs of Amsterdam visitors, and called it a night pretty soon after that.