Delft, Netherlands- First of hopefully many visits!

The kids had a day off from school so we headed North to the Netherlands.  Our goal was a cool visit somewhere but one without tons of walking for hop-along Kelly.

We went to the pottery factory in Delft.  It had a cool movie to start the tour, and a museum of old pottery and then you go in the actual factory.  You see people painting and all the pieces waiting to be worked on.

Here is one of the master painters at work...Greg looks like he is talking on his phone, but he's actually listening to the audio tour.

I loved the tulip vases, they sell them in the store at the end...for a mere 15,000 Euro I could have bought one..

One popular kids character is Miffy (see photo below).  We really got a kick out of seeing Miffy's ready to be made in the factory.

Miffy's being made.

Everyone liked trying on the giant wooden shoes painted in the same style as the pottery...

We did see windmills on the drive too..in case you were wondering!

At some points the windmills were on both sides of the road.

The town of Delft was really quaint.  It had little canals everywhere, a university, bikes, a town square and a market.  I loved trying some of the foods, here was a pastry/bread stand.

They also had lots of fish for sale...here was a herring on a roll...we tried a piece of the fried fish and it was amazing!

We bought Charlie a bag of Speculoos cookies- it looks like Cookie Crisp cereal.  Specloos is everywhere here and its delicious.  Here's what Wikipedia says about it.

SpeculaasSpeculaas or speculoos is a type of spiced shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on or just before St Nicholas' day in the Netherlands, Belgium, and around Christmas in Germany

Main ingredients: Flour, sugar, butter, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg

Charlie rating= A+++++++

We even buy the spread, pictured below in our local supermarket!

If you order a coffee in a restaurant it usually comes with one of the little cookies on the side.

We left Delft mid afternoon and headed on to the Hague which was another half an hour up the road.  I will post on that shortly, Kelly and Katie took a million pictures there (gotta keep up your Instagram feeds if you are a teenager) so I'll use those!