After my afternoon exploring Rotterdam and Kinderdijk I grabbed my bag and jumped on the train for the short 30 minute journey to the next major city – Delft. My friend and former colleague Niels lives in Delft and had kindly offered to let me stay the night with him.

As we walked from the train station towards his apartment, a lady asked Niels for directions to a hotel in town. Rather than giving her directions and sending her on her way he offered to take her as it was almost on the way. What followed was a very informative and sometimes comical history of Delft – delivered in both English and Dutch as we walked the few streets and canals into the city. Like most Dutch cities, it was built around canals and Niels convinced me that they were once clean and pure enough to brew some of the finest beer. As the water became more and more polluted, the breweries packed up, took their recipes and moved to Belgium. And because Niels’ surname is Brouwers which literally means brewer I am somewhat inclined to believe him.

I had arrived after dark, so I dropped my bag at the apartment and we headed out to dinner. On Niels’ recommendation we ended up at ‘De Parel van Flores’. Entering the restaurant and I was confronted by fake plants, tacky travel posters and a boisterous little man in a red chilli print shirt. He was the owner and proclaimed to me that this was the only other place in the world to get authentic Indonesian food. This guy was a bit of a legend amongst the students of Delft University, and the food certainly lived up to the lofty claim he had made. It took me a while to make the connection, but Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony (the Dutch East India Trading Company was founded in Delft).

After filling up on Indonesian we took the bridge over the canal into a tiny little bar on the street corner. This black doored bar was Trappisten Lokaal ‘T Klooster – a Belgium beer bar specialising in Trappist beers… the beers brewed by monks in their convent. Needless to say they had a pretty fantastic beer collection. Niels started by recommending a few to start with (and hence continuing my education in Belgium beers). We moved up to the bar when a few seats opened up and got chatting to the bartender – an uncontested expert when it came to the topic of beers and he was most willing to oblige when you requested a ‘slightly more fruity/bitter/hoppy beer’. My favourite beer of the evening – the “Op & Top” which was actually a Dutch beer. The night finished with a nice glass of Scotch Whisky from Niels’ extensive collection.

The next day was a gloomy, wet day – but that didn’t stop me from exploring the city. I started walking south and after an hour of wandering down little cobblestone streets and across canals I finally found the Royal Delft pottery factory. Those little blue and white plates with windmills painted on them – that is Dutch pottery and Royal Delft is the only traditional pottery house left. I picked up a few souvenirs for family back home while I was there.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon around the town centre. I found a coffee shop (cafe – not the other one) in a beautifully renovated building near the town hall and I spent the afternoon sheltering from the miserable weather with a nice warm coffee and writing blogs. I was not alone either. The tables and big rustic bench I was sitting at was home to students madly typing assignment or reading large textbooks.

Unlike most train stations, I could not find any lockers at the Delft train station, so I had left my bag at a nearby hotel. The end of the day was drawing near so I left the warm comfort of the cafe and headed back to collect my bag and catch another very short train ride north.

This post is tagged Delft, The Netherlands