Went to The Hague and Delft (guest post)

Hello, all. Sir Benedict Lamberbatch, here, formerly of Hamleys, London, now of Bury St Edmunds.

I accompanied Kate on her recent excursion to The Hague, and I thought you might appreciate some pictures.

This, my friends, is the Best Invention Ever. A vending machine that dispenses not coffee, not sweets, but BICYCLES. We did not partake (but we thought about it).

After a quick tour of Pijnacker, we headed into The Hague itself for some museuming.

The Mauritshuis was excellent - it's small but well-curated. I thought it was very strange that Kate wanted to see the paintings on loan from the Frick collection in NYC - she's been there and seen them in New York. Particularly since one of the paintings was a Constable painted near Ipswich. Daft to go to Holland to see a painting on loan from New York that was painted 20 miles from here.

This Vermeer of Delft was nice, though, I thought, and much less over-travelled.

We went to the Escher museum, too. This tiny little house was a few doors down:

Delft again:

Some very odd chandeliers (there was a different one in every room):

A rather worrying angel/devil circle:

And silly Kate, trying to do an Escher self portrait in a grubby sphere:

(The original:)

On Saturday, we went to the market in Delft.

And visited a paint store (Kate's friends have just bought a house):

The sun came out:

I tasted some chocolate:

Admired the Oude Kirk:

And a nice bike path:

I even relaxed by a canal (we did a LOT of walking so my feet were tired):

And then, I fulfilled one of my lifetime ambitions and sat in my very own Bakfiets.

We saw some YarnBombing:

Watched our hosts make googly eyes at each other:

And had a beer. We also had friets and frikandel (met frietsaus) for lunch, followed by stroopwafels. Healthy.

For supper, we went to Simonis Fish Restaurant - they sell wholesale fish and have a restaurant that makes up for lack of ambiance with excellent food.

On Easter Sunday, we took a trip up to see the tulips. They weren't quite out yet, but the hyacinths and daffodils were, and they were gorgeous.

I had a lovely time.

Kate's friend spent some time sitting amongst the daffodils. She didn't say why.

I made a friend. He spoke no English and I speak only limited Dutch, but we still had a lovely time. I particularly admired his hat and shovel combo.

We watched gliders being launched into the air.

And saw more frogs and frogspawn than we thought possible.

This was the one perfect tulip. The rest will be along shortly.

See?

We saw a tram (several, actually):

And watched the sun set over the English channel from the ferry back to England.