Rockanje to Delft

 Today was to be a shorter day… only 40km (24 ish miles) we only had one snag that almost took us from Not quite lost to all out lost. We were nicely zipping along and had just crossed over a major waterway and found ourselves in an industrial/port area of town. There was unfortunately a major road project going on with the bicycle route blocked by the road construction(highway looking like an interstate) So there was an arrow pointing to a detour. Unfortunately the arrows for the detour were only on every 3rd to 5th intersection which made following it rather nerve wracking. Well the detour ended up being a six mile detour that would have been about 1/4 mile direct. But we could not have asked for a better bicycle tour of the port facility.

We started our morning with an incredible breakfast at the B & B we stayed at last night. 

So at de Jongens we definitely did some Eten, and some Drinken, and enjoyed some Slapen.

Along the way from Rockanje to Delft we went through several areas with housing that was clearly higher density. We biked through a stretch like this with row after row of condos or apartments. (Not sure which) It is no wonder the Netherlands is the country with the highest population density in Europe.

So Yesterday I mentioned issues with almost getting lost. We are using a Garmin bicycle GPS as our routing guide. The tour company like the more simple models as he felt less can go wrong. (This may be the case) One issue that does seem to be a bit of a problem is it does not alarm or warn you that you are off the route.(our Garmin does this) As a result we can be going along and suddenly I realize that we are off route and need to back track to pick the route up again. Another problem is sometimes the route may be between two roads which eventually part. At times I cannot distinguish which road we need to be on leading to back tracking when we finally discover we are on the wrong one. Nothing has been really bad although we likely did go an extra 1-2 kilometers yesterday on our way to Rockanje. 

Todays Windmills seen as we biked along.

This is the same windmill as above. What I hope you can get a sense of is the height of the water relative to the buildings. It is a good example of how the water is confined at times above what would be considered ground level. We also saw this as we were biking along side a canal on the top of a dike when a highway went under the dike and the canal. 

More of the quaint towns built along the canal system.

After arriving in Delft we went to visit the Royal Delft Blue Factory/Museum. Evidently around 1500 some imported china (from China) was brought to Europe and was a big hit. So some clever Delft businessmen started making Delft China. It was a big hit and at one point there were 30 different factories making china in the city of Delft. Unfortunately English china factories developed improved fabrication methods and companies like Wedgewood started taking over the china market. From 30 factories at it’s peak Delft dropped to one remaining factory. A new owner in the mid 1800s changed the production methods and added several other innovations which saved the factory. 

All of the art work is still done by master painters.

On our way to and from the Delft factory we passed by this:

Now is this where Fred got his idea…. Or did this Meijer copy Fred??? Or is Meijer expanding to the Netherlands??

Sorry for the late update but we had a wonderful B and B in Delft.

It was like a one bedroom apartment with small kitchen and separate bedroom. Unfortunately the wifi was terrible with no upload ability. More coming soon.

Peace,

Dale and Ila