Today we had decided to explore a little bit more of the Netherlands and do a bit of a day trip out from our place here in Utrecht. We were up at a pretty good hour, had a little bit to eat, and got ourselves organized to head out for the day. We were going to be driving everywhere, and so we were able to take everything with us that we would need for the day. We were heading west, with the ultimate destination of the town of Delft. But rather than heading straight there, we decided to make a stop in the town of Gouda, along the way.
A map of our trip - I’m not sure this is exactly right, but it’s close.
Parking along side the canal.
Rather than take the highway, we decided to work our way to Gouda along the back roads. It took a little bit more time, but it was nice to see the Dutch countryside. This part of the country, like much of what we have seen, has been very rural and agricultural. On today’s drive, we went by fields and fields of greenhouses that seem to be everywhere!
The drive to Gouda was not that long, taking us about 3/4 of an hour. That put us into Gouda in the late morning. It took us a little while to find a parking spot, and for the first time I had to parallel park up against the edge of the canal. It’s a little bit nerve-racking, as there’s no room for error and your car could end up in the canal if you get too close! There are no guardrails - just straight into the water. The good news is we got parking place that was very close to the old city center, and so it was less than a five minute walk into the market square.
The amazing town hall.
Our decision to visit Gouda was a bit of a last minute, random decision, but Gouda ended up being a highlight for the trip. It’s a beautiful little town, not large at all, but it has a lot packed into it, and so much to see. There is an amazing old town hall right in the middle of the market square. The old City Hall at the Market square was built between 1448 and 1450, and is one of the oldest Gothic city halls in the Netherlands. Across from it is another cheese market and much like Alkmaar there is often an open air cheese market in the square during the year, on Thursdays. It wasn’t going on today, but you could see the big space where the cheese would be laid out.
The facade of the cheese market building.
Display in the cheese market.
Across from the old town hall was the cheese house. It was a gift shop and so we went in and ended up buying a couple of things.
After this, we wondered the streets for a little while, and ended up finding a very cool little cheese shop not too far away. We browsed for a little while and ended up buying a few things (OK lots of cheese!) before heading out.
From there, we headed to the old church, which has now been transformed into an amazing museum. The church has the most amazing collection of stained glass windows, and so we happily paid the price for admission to go in and wander around for a while.
You had free reign in the whole building, including being able to walk right up to the pulpit amongst all the pews and had great views of the most amazing pipe organ. But of course, the main attraction, was the stained glass windows. It’s hard to describe, but they are just absolutely stunning. You got a free audio tour as part of your entrance and it had a few interesting stories about a number of the windows.
The entrance to the old church with the amazing stained glass windows.
A model of the old church, inside the museum.
This was my favourite of the stained glass windows. It was a modern replacement, rather than an older one, but I really like it.
We walked around for about an hour, enjoying this incredible building and it’s amazing stained glass. Eventually, we headed out and back over to the main square. We stopped in a stroopwafel store, apparently the original vendor of the tasty treat, and could not resist buying a package to take home. These ones were absolutely delicious and the bakery smelled amazing. We wondered the narrow streets and checked out a few more shops along the way before eventually making our way back to the car and heading back out of town.
One last look at the old town hall.
It had been a spur of the moment decision to visit Gouda but it ended up being a great one as it’s an amazing little town and we really enjoyed our morning exploration. From Gouda, the trip to Delft was fairly quick, about another hour. We ended up arriving close to 1 o’clock, and managed to find a place to park just on the outside of the old city. Mom had been to Delft the last time she was here, and really wanted us to see it. Again, it ended up being and excellent decision.
Like most of the cities in the Netherlands, Delft has many canals.
A very typical Dutch house, as we walked into the old town.
The old windmill at the edge of the city.
Amazingly enough, there was an old windmill right across the street from the parking garage where we parked the car. And it was free to enter! So we spent a little while, exploring the windmill walking up all the way to the top of the structure.
This windmill, amazingly, is still in operation and they were actually using it to grind flour while we were there. So we got to watch an actual windmill using wind power to grind wheat into flower and they were doing the whole production right there, including bagging it and selling it in the little store.
I would’ve loved to have bought some, but wasn’t sure about bringing that back to Canada.
The windmill ended up being a very unexpected and cool stop along the way. We walked from the windmill into the centre of the old town, along one of the many canals.
The path let us to the old church in the centre of town, which really dominates the skyline. Unfortunately, there was a fairly high admission price to go into it and we weren’t really up for that. Instead, and just a few meters away, we ended up finding what was posted as the oldest building in Delft basically right across one of the small canals. This building, from the outside, was pretty spectacular in and of itself.
We admired for a little while and then had lunch at a little restaurant, sitting out on the patio across from the old church. The food was great, and as it was already about 3 o’clock, we were pretty hungry. After lunch, we wandered a little bit further into the main square. This might be the nicest square that we’ve seen in any of the cities so far in Netherlands. The square has two main buildings in the City Hall, and the new church. What’s interesting about it is how big the square is and the huge distance between these two main structures. It was relatively quiet and so you could actually see both buildings without huge crowds in between.
You couldn’t go into the City Hall, but we did go into the gift shop of the new church. The New Church, formerly the church of St. Ursula (14th century), is the burial place of the princes of Orange. The church is remarkable for its fine tower and chime of bells, containing the splendid allegorical monument of William the Silent. It was crafted by Hendrik de Keyser and his son Pieter about the year 1621. The tower of the church was built 1396-1496 by Jacob van der Borch, who also built the Dom in Utrecht during the years 1444-1475. The mechanical clock has 18 bells, made by Francois Hemony from 1659. In the church tower there is a bell from 1662 by Francois Hemony with a diameter of 104 centimeters. In the tower there are also bells no longer in use.
The “new” church and it’s tower.
The last time mom had been there you could actually climb the stairs up to the top of the new church, which is almost as high as the Dom Tower in Utrecht. But sadly, you now had to pay for entry, so we skipped it. There was a Royal Delft shop in the square and so we popped into that and I ended up buying a pretty cool little tile to take home as a souvenir.
After that we walked about 20 minutes through the city over to the Royal Delft factory. It was a nice walk and we got to see some different and more residential areas of the city. Once again Mom‘s recollection was that you could get in to see the factory for free the last time she was here. But once again, you had to pay admission to do so. So we skipped that and wandered around the gift shop for a while. The gift shop was spectacular, with some of the items on display for sale being just incredible works of art. The ceramics are incredibly expensive and I toyed with picking up something to bring home, but ended up opting out.
The Royal Delft ceramics factory and showroom.
There were some beautiful pieces. I would have loved to take something home with me but it was just a little bit too expensive. We walked back into the centre of the old town, enjoyed the sites of the old city and the huge main square. As we were continuing on, we actually found a shop selling old antique tiles. This was actually quite interesting, as some of them went back to the 1200s. I end up picking up one of these old tiles for Justine as a gift to bring home. It was from 1260 and had this cool illustration of a goat on it, which seemed appropriate.
From there, we wandered along the cool little streets along the canal popping into a few shops along the way. Mom found a gift for Lisa in one of the chocolate shops and then eventually we made our way into the Delft Brouhaus. I had had one of their beers earlier in the day and really enjoyed it and so thought it might be fun for us to have a short rest at the brewery. It felt like it was time to have a drink and I was eager to check out a few more of their beers. We were completely unprepared for how cool this brewery was. We went inside and immediately were drawn to the lower level where it looked like the new building had been built into the foundations of some ancient ruin.
The walls were all very old stone and they had cantilever the brewery up above it all, which was really cool. In talking to the waitress, she told us that the old walls in the basement dated the 1100 or 1200s. When they were renovating to build the brewery, they had actually come across the old foundations and needed to bring in archeologists to help excavate. In doing so they found some of the original walls, including the green tiles which date back to the earliest days of the city. It was really fascinating.
And the beer was really good. After that, we walked back to the car and back towards our home base. This was our last night in Utrecht and mom asked us to try and find some small, cool little town for us to stop in to have dinner along the way. So I decided to ask ChatGPT. I gave it some pretty basic instructions and it actually gave us three very interesting options to choose from. We randomly picked one, Woerden, and made the drive there. It took us about 45 minutes and I think it was about 7 o’clock by the time that we arrived. We easily found a parking space as the town was very, very quiet.
There was a spectacular old church nearby that we had a look at from the outside and there’s actually a castle in town that has been converted into some sort of event facility. We walked up to it, but you really couldn’t get inside. From there, we walked through the streets past the old City Hall and into what looked to be the main square of the town outside the church. The church in this town was actually very brutalist and wasn’t very interesting. As we were wandering, we found yet another old windmill, so we took a swing by and had a look at it. We then made our way back into the square and had a very nice dinner in one of the restaurants there. The food was amazing, and might’ve been the best meal that we’ve had on the trip so far. From there, it was a quick drive back to our accommodations and we called it a night. We had to get packed up in the morning for our drive to our last stop in Eindhoven.