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.