Unending Stairs and Schoolbus Kitchens

Following a dreary rainy week and a rushed attempt to produce a status report at work (and seriously, who emails on Monday morning asking for a report by Monday AFTERNOON?!?!? The liaison to my project funding, that's who.), I have had an awesome weekend of touristy goodness with MM and her lovely almost husband (in fact, I'll be at their wedding in a week) W.

First off, I might have gotten us just a little lost, when my brain combined the way to the city centre with the way to IKEA, which paths aren't really even a little bit convergent. Luckily, Delft is the size of a postage stamp, and it was perfect weather for a bike ride anyway. We walked through the antiques market, parked our bikes, and started our tour of really beautiful old churches. We went to the Oude Kerk (translation; Old Church) which was built in 1605, and is just a little tilted these days. Then we went to the Nieuwe Kerk, which means "New Church" because it's less old than the Oude Kerk. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, new. These are the two main Protestant (I don't know which flavour) churches in town. They hold concerts and community events in them, since the congregations are no longer large enough to support a minister. In the Nieuwe Kerk, there's the option of climbing the tower, so up we went. And up, and up, and up, and up. The stairs were terrifying, because they're steep, spiralling, and very very narrow. This made going past the people coming back down a touch challenging. But not only that, they go on forever. The stairs trick you too; you finally get up into a room, and can go outside, only to discover that you're HALFWAY there and the next set of stairs starts on the other side of the room. We took a bunch of pictures at the halfway point. The second set of stairs is just as narrow, steep, and spirally as the first half, although they do change spiral directions a couple times, just to keep things interesting. After approximately eleventy bajillion stairs, and several pauses while people went around us, and my shoe strap falling off twice, we made it to the top. The view is fantastic, although it was pretty hazy. The railing on the walkway (it's too narrow to really be a balcony) is nice and thick and high, so there's no fear of falling. It's really all quite excellent, until you realize you have to go back down both unending staircases again. I was pretty quivery by the time we got to the bottom. MM timed us, and it took us about 10 minutes just to descend. The photos are courtesy of MM and W, since I was playing with the zoom lens and I haven't gotten the hang of it yet. Most of the pictures I took were pretty fuzzy. We also went to the market, passed a few of the jazz festival stages, and ate the best apple pie in Delft.
On Sunday we went to the beach in Den Haag, which was chilly and therefore nice and empty. We ate at one of the beach restaurants, selected because it had menus printed in Dutch and English on the tables. Most places do have a few English menus, but having them out meant we could more easily decide if the food looked good. Best of all, it turns out the kitchen was the school bus parked at the side of the outdoor dining area.

Taking the bus

I went to work in Utrecht today, since I have a meeting on Thursday, my usual day out of town. It takes me two trains and a bus ride each way to get there. The trains are always pleasant, and great knitting time, but I could live without the bus ride. Not that it's horrible or anything, but you have to pay better attention to which stop you're at and it can get pretty crowded.

Today, however, the bus was fantastic. The chipkart reading thingy was broken on both buses I took, so I got to ride free each way, for starters. On the bus home, I put my card up to the reader machine, and nothing happened. The bus driver said "Beep beep!" and smiled. It took me a minute to figure out, but he was making the card read noise and communicating I could get on the bus, in like the silliest way possible. I laughed.

I had to stand on the bus, because the between 17:00 and 18:00 buses are always crowded. At the next stop, an elderly woman who totally reminded me of my Grandma got on. You could only tell she was older by her hair and her skin; her stance and body language were very young.

Now, the bus driver's sense of whimsy seemed to extend to his driving as well. Or maybe he was trying to find out just how little space the bus needed to stop, or something. After the first stop where everyone who was standing nearly fell over, the guy sitting next to me tapped the older woman and asked if she wanted his seat. She refused, and really looked like she was having a great time with the balancing on the ride of insanity, but it made me happy that this random guy thought to ask. Warm fuzzies on a bus ride, who knew?