Churches, Palaces, and Parliament

Sept. 17-18

We are in the middle of old stuff in Delft. We step out of the hotel into a plaza covered with plane trees. A huge specimen outside the door may be what the Hotel de Plataan is named for. 

A canal flows on the right toward the New Church.

It feels like a slightly quieter Amsterdam—except for the Market Square right now, which has been taken over by carnival rides and thumping music. But you can’t hear that more than a block away. The old buildings and narrow streets act as a baffle for the noise.

So far, we have visited the New Church and the Old. Both of them were Gothic monuments that were gutted and made bland by Protestant iconoclasts. 

Some of the old spectacle was returned in the New Church with the monument to William of Orange. He is not, as I had first thought, the Dutch king of England. 

This William, Prince of Orange, is known as the Father of the Fatherland, because he led the initial revolt against Spanish rule in the Low Countries. 

William was murdered at his palace, the Prinsenhof, a few blocks from here, by an assassin working for the Spanish king and was buried in the New Church. There is now a huge crypt under the church floor where the Dutch royals are buried.

Except the royals at the Nieuwe Kerk, nobody is buried in a Dutch church any more.

It was common in the old days, if your family was prominent. According to the history brochure they hand out at the church, the stench could be overwhelming. It says that may be the source of the term “stinking rich.”

The Old Church is the resting place of Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek. There are monuments to naval heroes, including one for an admiral named Piet Hein, not to be confused with the Danish inventor of Grooks.

After we stood on Vermeer’s bones, we decided to celebrate the other end of his life by taking dinner at the Flying Fox on Voldersgracht. This is one of Vermeer’s two birthplaces. The other is a souvenir shop. 

We started with a duck leg, which I found perfect. It had a fruit-based sauce, which made it delightfully dark red inside and out.

It was too rare for Joanna, who ate some of the darker ends. 

She moved on to the second course, sea bass in lobster sauce. 

I was busy with the rest of the duck. I don’t get the chance to have it very often, so when it comes my way, I enjoy it.

Joanna gave me a sample of the fish. It was good too, but I preferred the duck.

Besides the Delft churches, the other reason we are here is to visit Mauritshuis, a palace turned art museum in the Hague. It’s easy to reach: a stroll past the Oude Kerk to the tram station, which is a block or so down the road from a windmill.

Looks like the Ij Brewery in Amsterdam.

It’s a 25-minute ride to Den Haag Centrum.

You walk past the Ministries of Defense and Justice.

We stopped at a little park to eat a banana that Joanna had kept from breakfast and then went around the corner to the gate of the museum.

Mauritzhuis is not a large museum, but it’s packed with interesting things. 

I expected more Vermeers, but only saw three. One is “The Girl With the Pearl Earring.” 

The other is a group of figures representing Diana and her nymphs. One appears to be washing Diana’s foot with a cake of soap. 

There is an almost dreamlike presence in many Vermeer paintings. The illusion of light on fabric was there, but the rest lacked something. I can’t say exactly what.

It was also much larger than any other Vermeer I’ve seen so far. Agreed: That’s not saying much. There are three dozen paintings attributed to Vermeer in the world, and I may have caught up to fewer than a third of them.

But even so, I expect everything to be the size of “The Milkmaid,” “The Astronomer,” or “The Music Lesson.” 

This was at least four, maybe even six, times the scale. Wall size instead of niche size.

The third Vermeer is a highly detailed long view of Delft.

We’ve been watching “The Tudors” again on Netflix, so Joanna got a charge out of finding a Hans Holbein portrait of Jane Seymour. He rendered her with a tight little mouth and her chin drawn back defensively.

There is a striking Rubens heavily influenced by Caravaggio, “Old Woman and Boy With Candles.” It has that play of light and dark bringing out the gritty realism of the faces.

Another interesting piece is a collaboration by Rubens and Breughel, “The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man.” Rubens painted Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and the tree. Also a horse watch the couple take the apple. 

Breughel did most of the animals and the plants. My favorite part is a spotted cat, maybe a leopard, swatting its paw at an inquisitive bull.

The museum is next to an impressive complex of  buildings.

The road passes through arches in the walls. Only official vehicles drive there, but the way is filled with pedestrians and bicyclists who weave in and out of crowds.

We had no idea what it was. We went through the arch into a courtyard. There was a church and large old buildings full of windows. I wondered if it might be a university campus.

Joanna thought to ask someone standing by one of the doors. We were at the Dutch national parliament buildings and didn’t know it.

Later, back in Delft, we had a hankering for pasta. We had passed a number of pizzerias, so I did some research. Reviews for Dolce Amaro on Voldersgracht made it look promising.

The menu online included spaghetti carbonara made with guanciale and egg. The real thing. So that’s were we went.

The carbonara was indeed excellent. So was Joanna’s spaghetti vongole.

The house red was a Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo. We took a half liter of that. It’s one of my favorite varieties of wine. It came in an earthenware pitcher, which may have made it even tastier.

That’s all for now, gang. 

Love to all, and may everybody stay well. 

Harry