Delft Blue
delft was one of my favorite parts of our trip. it’s just a short drive from my family’s house and it was another beautiful day! i added delft to our itinerary because it’s where the classic blue and white delft ware comes from! and if you know me, you know i love my blue and white ware and clothing ;) i could hardly handle all of the shops with antique delftware! i wanted everything i saw. these little blue and white houses were some of my favorites. you could find them all over the country and the ones i posted here are old bottles of alcohol that klm used to give out on flights! most still have alcohol in them and the number that indicates what series they were a part of. i thought they were so cute. the man whose antique shop this was, was so dutch and immediately started talking to us in dutch and i so wish i understood and could respond. that happened a lot on our trip but luckily most people figured out quick that we didn’t understand them haha.
in the middle of the main square, a man was carving wooden clogs! we stopped to watch him do his work and he explained to us how it’s done and why he still carves clogs. it was very impressive, especially that he knew at least three languages and spoke to a few different groups of people in their language! he made the carving look so easy- it cute like butter! riley and i tried them on and they were surprisingly comfortable! they are able to be carved to perfectly fit your feet and they don’t squeeze your toes like normal shoes. he was so much fun and i loved learning about this old tradiotion. all of that learning made us hungry for poffertjes which are tiny little pancakes or flat aeblskivers served with strawberries, cream, ijs, and powder sugar. it was the best treat, to say the least!
obviously, one of the greatest things about holland was the cheese and all of the cheese shops! we probably should have taken home a little wheel of cheese, but there were a lot of things we wanted to take home! i even said that i wish we had an empty suitcase just for food haha! maybe next time we’ll plan ahead :) oh and take note how the dutch men wore their bandanas around their neck– i wore mine that way for the rest of our trip :)
^^^i’m just now noticing that blue and white mural in that alley way and i’m kicking myself for not noticing it while we were there!
one of my favorite discoveries was raw herring! i did not think i would like it but i’m always up for trying what the locals eat. we didn’t get a good photo of me eating it, but the traditional way is that you throw your head back, hold the fish up by the tail, and eat it upside down! i got mine with onions and it was delicious! the texture was strange at first, but the saltiness was just too good! riley didn’t like it as much as i did, but hey, more for me!
delft was a beautiful city to window shop and take in all of the old buildings. and of course go into every shop with blue and white ware in the windows ha! there were also a lot of canals, which made it feel like a smaller, cleaner, less crowded amsterdam :)
