Wandering Browns

First thing, Landon ran into the chapel and said, "Look, mom! A big organ!" Little room off of the entrance/gift shop Our first day in Delft, I fell in love with it. It is small enough to easily navigate, big enough to have plenty to do, with tons of European charm. I wanted to find an excuse to go there again, and going to Prinsenhof museum seemed like a great use of a morning. The train ride from Schiedam to Delft is only 8 minutes, so it makes for easy travel to a completely different place! Landon and the fire place Graphic of William's many wives Prinsenhof was the house of William of Orange, the man who is called “Vader of the Vaderland” or Father of the Fatherland by the Dutch people. During a time of political turmoil, he stepped forward as a resistance leader to the Spanish occupation, and eventually was assassinated for it. The political climate was quite interesting at the time. An Emperor in Brussels appointed his son, Philip, King of t...

Royal Delft factory and store! To be honest, I had no clue that this style of china- Delft Blue- came out of the Netherlands. When I was looking through things to do in Delft, this was near the top of the list, and I thought to myself, "WOW! That sounds like a really cool thing to do, but taking a toddler into some place like this seems like it is asking for loads of trouble and not very much fun." Then I thought to myself, "How about we do something fun for him in the morning, feed him a nice lunch, and get him down for a nap in the stroller, and then do whatever you want!" And that's what I did. Lovely wall of china in the front room Process of making a vase- from plain to fired! Before I completely made my decision to do this, I made sure that the entire tour was handicap accessible, so that I could roll him through the tour without much trouble. Everything checked out and we were good to go! The lady at the front desk was very helpful and acc...

Stadhuis Delft Delft is pretty awesome in that it has two epic churches fairly close to one another. Across the square from the Nieuwe Kerk was the Stadhuis- or city hall building. At the time I had no idea what it was, but it was a cool enough building I just had to get a picture of it! The Nieuwe kerk is currently undergoing renovations and so the grandeur of the building was partially obscured by scaffolding. I appreciate restoration work and keeping people safe, but it does unfortunately take away from the whole experience. Oh well. Although it is called the "New Church" this was originally built as a wooden church in 1381, after a beggar had a vision of Mary, mother of Jesus sitting on a throne on the Markt or main square. A man witnessed the beggar having this vision, and in turn had similar dreams about a church being built on the spot of the vision after the beggar's death. Thirty years later, a temporary wooden structure was built and plans for a more per...