 |
Our hotel is an old Delft canal house, and our sunny room overlooks an old Delft canal, appropriately called the Oude Delft Canal. I strolled to the big town square called the Markt today, while Frank tried to replace some jet-lagged sleep.
No actual rain fell on my mithril raincoat, but cloudy skies and a wet breeze made me glad I’d brought warm clothing for these few days. It is a lovely, classical Dutch civic space, with fake wooden shoes now on sale from every ground floor. Then, after seeing your dad off to his conference, I hopped on a train to Den Haag, to revisit the lovely Vermeers in the Mauritshuis (most notably Girl with Pearl Earring and View of Delft.) |
|
To my delight, they also had Vermeer’s most ambitious painting on temporary loan from Vienna — “Allegory of Painting”, which he had on display in his own studio until his death. Allegedly, the chair in the foreground invites you to sit down in the artist’s studio so that Vermeer himself can (metaphorically) pull the curtain aside to reveal to you more of his art. Quite aside from the complex story the painting supposedly tells, it’s pretty spectacular in the sheer scope of what it imitates (glass, fabric, skin, wood, ripples of shadow, rays and twinkles of light, etc.)
The museum was uncrowded except for a couple of surges of Japanese tourists, who seemed to be running some kind of endurance race. 30 tourists crowd together in front of one painting, 30 tourists listen to 2-minute spiel in Japanese, 30 tourists snap flash pictures of the painting, 30 tourists hasten away to another painting. Of course, much of the fun was also riding Dutch trains and trams again, not to mention wandering cheerfully over the bricks and cobbles of many small side streets. Also ordering a lunch of mixed appetizers and being very surprised that it included bits of raw hamburg(?)–which I did not eat, by the way. Now I’ll take a much-needed nap, but not before forcing this email into double duty as a traveler’s blogpost. |
 |
Love you a lot and xxx to all,
Mom