Friday, August 9

We wanted to take Dan and Sue to Delft so they could checkout the china stuff. Delft china is world famous for its blue china creations: plates, bowls, flower vases, pitchers, etc. Its interesting that in the 1600's it was the Dutch making cheap imitations of these things from China. As time went on, they got better and better at it, like the Japanese making cars in the last half of the 20th century. Anyway, they're really good at it now. At one time there were 11 factories in Delft, now they're down to 2 and we toured one of them.

We just walked in the door and asked for a tour and a young man names Hans gave us a personalized tour of the factory on the two upper floors. He showed us how they start with clay from Germany to get the brighter white, pour it into molds, let it cool, fire it. The firing takes 24 hours. They raise the temperature to 1900 degrees centigrade and then let it cool down. Then the item is hand painted with a black cobalt and then fired again. This second time turns the black to blue and brightens any other colors. We watched one worker painting a plate. He can complete it in about 4 hours. Smaller items, of course, take less time. All this to say, this stuff is not cheap. We purchased a tile and earrings for Linda.

From the factory, we drove over to the main part of town and walked through several streets until we found the main square. By this time, it was time to eat lunch. Sue had a tuna salad, Dan had chicken satay, Linda had mussels and I had a weinerschnitzel. Linda's mussels were a little fishy, but everything else was good with beer.

The women spent the next hour and a half shopping while Dan and I sat at the cafe and watched people walking by on the square. Sue found a set of Dutch shoes that were salt and pepper shakers. Real cute. They found some other rather surprising stuff. When they finally finished, we headed for Laren and poffertjes. We take all of our guests to this place which only makes these little smashed donut holes. Its an essential experience.

Back to the house, we just hang out.