hot tip: learn the language of a foreign country before you visit!

tues jan 24: so i wanted to make the most of my day since this was probably going to be my last one in the hague. i rode straight into town (i knew the way pretty well by now..but jeez its looks a lot different in the daytime!) and went to the Museum de Gevangenpoort which was a prison museum. the next walking tour was in like 35 min so i did some walking around that area, using that same walking tour i had downloaded. then i went to the binnenhof visitor center and asked about walking tours and the lady said there was one going that day but i said i didnt think id make it in time so ill check back another day. so i went back to the Museum de Gevangenpoort and had my tour. i was the only one so the guide spoke english, which is good because otherwise it would have been in dutch since they only do english tours on sundays! his english wasnt the greatest but i understood everything. so he showed me the cells for the poor male criminals, it was quite small and 20 men were put in there, with 1 tiolet. and when we were leaving he said the reason why the beam above the door was so low was to prevent people from escaping when the jailer opened the door. so by having to duck, it would slow them down, and by that time, the jailer would have closed the door. but i went under it just fine! and i said ""oh its no problem for me!"and he said ""yeah you would have easily escaped!" so then he showed me the wealthy person's cell and that was better than most middle class homes during that time! but the criminals paid for this room themselves. then he took me to the upper rooms which i cant remember if it was the female cell or not but it had all torture weapons in it. then he took me to the dungeon where they used the torturing devices. and the walls were decorated with ceramic tiles but that wasnt to make it look pretty, it was because it was easier to clean the blood off them! and the tiles were all manufactored rejects anyway and some were even hung upside down. apparently once the criminals confessed to the crime, they had to say it again, without being tortured, so when they were brought to court, the torturers could say "they confessed without physical constraint" or something like that. gotta love the legal system =) so after the tour, which ended sooner than i thought, i ran to the visitor center (diagonally across the street) and booked myself on the 11:15 am tour of the binnenhof. so it was me and a bunch of older dutch people. when we were in the courtyard the guide spoke mainly in dutch but then told me in english what she told them, how the queen has a golden couch that needs to be brought into the zidderhaal on some ceremonious day. then we went into the knights hall we watched a film about the history of the hague and the binnenhof (which by the way houses the magistrate and all that political jazz). i was given headphones so i could hear in english but the video was too loud that i couldnt hear the english through my headphones. so that was annoying. then we went into the room where the queen delivers the new policies for the upcoming year (even though she does this in sept!) i was given some paper that was "the english translation"of the tour, even though it was only 1 page long per room and we were in each room for like 20 minutes. so when we are in this room in the knights hall, im just sitting there, the guide is going on and on in dutch, and i finished reading the 1 page like 15 min ago! when she finished she turns to me and goes, ""do you have any questions, i covered a lot!"" and i wanted to be like..um yeah, can you translate everything you just said! but i said no so we left and went into another building, much more modern one, and then we went into the chamber of the parliament and saw where the reps sit and everything. and yeah 1 1/2 hours later the tour was over and i came way E5 less and not much more knowledgable, so that was a bit disappointing. but for the next time i do a walking tour in a country whose native language isnt english, i will be sure to ask what language the tour is in! so after that i went back to the Museum de Gevangenpoort to see the areas of the museum that are self guided. but what do you know, it was mostly in dutch so i didnt even know the purpose of the rooms and what the artefacts actually were. then i went to the Gallerij Prins Willem V which was right next to the Museum de Gevangenpoort. there i saw lots of golden age paintings, and being that this really was where prince william V kept his art collection, they hung the paintings as was done in the 18th cent, so covering the entire wall and very close to each other. but that was a real nice gallery, although he had a thing for hunting paintings. but there were the usual biblical, mythological and portrait ones as well. the explainations of the paintings were in english so i was relieved, and the intro video had english subtitles =) so after that i went to history museum of the hague which was really close, right on the other side of the Hofvijver, the little area of water adjacent to the binnenhof. so they had more paintings, as well as a really nice painting of 17th cent the hague. they had a book explaining the paintings and some artefacts in english, but not everything! the 2nd floor which apparently housed nice paintings as well was being revamped so that was all closed off. and the 3rd floor wasnt translated at all! it was a shame cause they had a whole temp exhibit on golden earring, who are from the hague! and a bit ironically, the only thing in english was their singing! and the other exhibit on the floor was about a lady who collected doll houses and furniture for it, but again all in dutch. so i got through that museum rather quickly, but it was about 4 ish now so i decided to do more of my walking tour, so i went around the city centre, went through some nice parks (which i took notice of the day before as well, esp the one right across from centraal station! quite big! although i doubt there's deer in there as the sign implys..) and i went to the queens office building. had a statue of william of orange outside. also saw some nice monuments around town, especially a war memorial in the middle of a roundabout. it was massive! the grote kerk was closed so i didnt get to see inside =( i finished the tour in the new hague then i went back to the tourist office and read about some other places around town that i had seen but just didnt know what it was (like the old town hall..really pretty!)  i went to the new town hall and they had some more info about the hague there. so shell, the gas company's HQ is in the hague! didnt get to see it though..or the peace palace. then there was a 10 min film about the hague's history so i watched that. after that it was getting dark so i went back to henk and petra's. i went food shopping (with a list henk made for me with the dutch words!) and then cooked them eggplant parm with pasta. it was kind of a disaster but it went down okay! then i created a ridewithgps account and henk helped me with some routes. and with that i was off to bed!
wed jan 25: so i decided that even though there was still lots more of the hague i wanted to see (notably the queens palace) i thought it would be best to go somewhere else. henk and petra live closer to delft than to the hague center so i went to delft instead. i followed the tram line until i saw the signs for the delftware factory so i arrived and did a tour. it was just me again =) so english yayy! the guy demonstrated how they make the pottery from clay and then showed me a kiln with some example mugs in there. then he showed me where the workers do the paintings (all hand painted) and showed me a series of unfinished plates to demonstrate the process of painting, glazing and firing. then i went to the shop and thought it would make a nice gift for my mom but holy guacamole were they expensive. i settled on a 50c postcard for myself! then i rode along the river to the center and went to the tourist info and picked up a map and self guided walking tour. then i went to the vermeer museum, which was his painting studio. so it talked about his paintings and the goings on in the netherlands and more specifically delft during that era (breweries were a big thing). there was a mini globe in the secion that mentioned trade and i dont know why but i touched it and it broke! it fell off its axle and fell to the ground! i tried to put it back on again  but it wouldnt stay properly, so i walked away quickly! then in the other rooms they talked about how he was the master of light and showed enlarged copies of his paintings to emphasize details. then it showed the raw materials that he used to mix in oil and get his colored pigments for his paintings. so after that i went to the museum het prinsenhof which takes the museum card but because there was a special exhibit going on, i had to pay extra. so i went to this special exhibit first, and i had a guide book in english, but it gave an overview of the rooms (which were all themed) but the rest was in dutch, so i dont even know much about it. all i know is that it was about some famous dutch portrait artist who painted lots of royalty. so i went to the main part of the museum, and it talked about the 80 years war and all the trouble with the spanish and the iconoclastic fury. and a large part was about william of orange because i think he used to live there for some time. but he was actually murdered there, so there was a whole section on that as well. and there was the wooden chest which hugo de groot escaped from loevestein castle in with the help of his wife, and then he fled to france. so anyway i had been eyeballing ANOTHER security guard and the museum was a maze so i asked him and another guard which way was the exit and the hottie took me there. i wanted to ask for his number (what did i have to lose?) but i thought it wasnt appropriate while he was at work. so i left but then remembered i had picked up these mini cards that you get discounts and free stuff at attractions, and i thought the one i had was for the vermeer museum, so i went back there but they told me no its actually for the prinsenhof so i went back and showed the lady the card (which entitled me to a free gift), so the gift was either this ginormous book (in english) on the painter who painted the ceiling in one of the rooms  or a post card. so obviously i took the book, but it was real heavy! and when she told me about the ceiling i said i didnt see it so she told me to go into the room past where the bullet holes are from william of orange's murder. so hottie showed me the way and i said, ""wait where are the bullet holes!"" and he said that was the main attraction of the museum! and im thinking, then why isnt there an english translation for the dutch text above it! cause i had seen them earlier but i just didnt know what they were (i thought the wall was detoriating). so i went into the room with the ceiling, then left for the second time. didnt get hotties number this time around either =( i was kind of missing england, cause i was annoyed that i nearly missed a very important feature in the museum, all because i couldnt read dutch. so i was feeling a bit frustrated how i also had to pay for this extra exhibit and i couldnt understand most of it. and even the names of places, i dont understand (which is why i confused vermeer's studio with the house for william of orange!). and signs too on buildings that give a brief history of it, it doesnt have a translation so i dont know what its saying. the flip side is that i get around town and the museums a lot quicker, but it just sucks to want to learn about something but you cant! so after that museum i went i did the walking tour of delft until it got dark. it took me to the new and old church (but it was too late to go inside) and to another church, along the canals and pointed out some old and historic buildings. also around town they had little info boxes about vermeer paintings so i stopped to read those. it started to get dark so i walked back to where i parked lance but noticed right across the street there was a bicycle parking lot,but you had to pay for it, but it had a security person guarding it. i thought this was a bit strange so i took a picture, and the guy in the booth was asking me questions in dutch and i told him i only speak english and he said he didnt speak english but then asked where i was from. and he then tried to ask me about NY but the conversation wasnt going anywhere and he brought me in the booth to show me a map because i said i needed to know how to leave delft. well the language barrier definitely didnt help means so i just took a quick peak at the map and left. i vaguely remembered the way i went in but because it was dark i didnt recognize anything and i had no signs telling me where the hague was. so i rode around for a bit and eventually did find the tram tracks that i followed to delft, so i followed them back to henk and petras. petra had a day off so she went to a sauna so henk took me for chinese take out. we went back to their place and ate it and then petra came home. she told me that it will soon freeze and everyone will then start skating. i thought, oh wow, just like i see in the golden age paintings! i didnt realize just how much the dutch love the ice! yet another reason why i love this country. and she also told me that people go in saunas naked here!! thats so crazy, never ever would that be allowed in the US. so we chatted a bit more, i did my laundry, cleaned lance, and i went to bed early. thurs jan 25: i left early to go back to delft and see the rest of it and then needed to then go to rotterdam. unfortunately my hat shrunk in the wash and no longer fit on my head =( and it rained nearly the whole day which counteracted the washing of lance i did the night before.but anyway i went to delft, i first went to a fish market and tried herring! i didnt have it with onions, but i did eat it the way youre supposed to.it wasnt as bad as i thought it was going to be! then i went to the town hall and the old church. then i went to this indonesian museum that had a lot of artefacts (i think it has the most in the country) . the same hot security guard was working there! but i still didnt work up the courage to ask for his number. i didnt spend too long there, and then i went next door to a candy shop from the 1850s. i bought a whole bunch of candy and then ate it as i did more of the walking tour. every piece of candy i bought i hated. it tasted absolutely awful. i couldnt even stomach them! and then, right at that moment, i stepped in dog crap. so i had to wipe my shoe on a tree, but it got most of the crud off. i then went to spit out the candy in a garbage pail, and i saw a guy smirking at me. im not sure if he witnessed the dog crap incident, or he was laughing at my facial expressions as i was trying to eat the candy, and honestly, i dont know which was worse. so after doing more of the walking tour (the extended part which really took me all of the town!) then i went to the new church and they had a little exhibition on the history of the church, and i saw the memorial and tomb of william of orange and the tomb of hugo de groot. i read more of those vermeer info boxes along the way, and found out that one of his famous paintings was one that got stolen in the isabella gardener heist! how crazy is that! and i saw that the MET has some of his paintings as well. so it was about 4:30 pm by this point so i then left for rotterdam. i passed the techinical university and then i pretty much saw everything in delft! so i followed the cycle network,  it really took me off road, in these fields and polders, and nothing was paved. i was doing fine until it got dark. i got lost, probably because i couldnt see the turn off sign, but i was following the only path in this field and then it suddenly just ended. then there were several directions i could go, but no direction sign so i just chose straight ahead and kept going until i saw a cycle network map. i had missed the turn off for route 70, so i got out my book and saw i could take route 16 or i could just go back the way i came to route 70, but i figured if i missed it once before i will miss it again (keep in mind it has been raining this whole time, although not hard). so i followed signs for route 16,  which took me over a bridge and under a tunnel and along a dark residential area for a while. i felt like i was going back the way i came but i just kept going. i  was only supposed to follow it for a few miles but i definitely did more than that. so i checked the book again and realized i took route 16 in the wrong direction (it kind of didnt cross my mind that routes go in 2 directions!) but i was able to follow this around and get back to route 70 anyway so i did that and got back on track and then took that to route 13 which was kind of confusing cause i needed to follow that onto a bridge but the sign made this whole curvature arrow so i thought that meant i needed to turn around and go back the way i came, so i did that at first but then realized that it was telling me to follow the bridge lol. so i was getting there to rotterdam, ended up in the middle of some more fields in the pitch black following a path again. i saw some guy on a motor bike that was just standing there so i asked where rotterdam was and he told me it was like 7 km away but told me to keep following the path then turn right. so i did and i could see big buildings in the distance so i was happy that i was going in the right direction. the river (maybe delfthaven?) was on my left so i followed that for some time then picked up route 84 on the network and that took me through a golf course and some other dark areas but outside of traffic. the thing that annoyed me about the cycle network is that it doesnt do a good job of telling you what route you are on! like i needed to get off the network and take the streets once 84 and 85 intersected, but the only signs i saw were for 85 so i wasnt sure if i was actually on 84 and it was saying "this is the way to 85"or it was saying ''you are on 85, continue this way" so i just followed it all around anyway and then realized i was on 84 and saw the junction with 85 and the other network routes. so then i was supposed to follow this main busy road to my hosts, rob and emmys, place but i misread the map and went the wrong way and i kept checking the book but maybe i was just tired and my brain was fried because i just couldnt read it right! so i stopped like 5 times and every time i propped lance up against a pole and he fell several times and the frame got all scraped up =( so anyway i continued following this road for a while but i knew it was the wrong way so i called rob and he told me to turn back the way i came and he would meet me at a gas station. then at that moment i saw a boy on a bike get hit by a car!  it wasnt anything serious though, the car was turning the corner so not like it was going fast, and the boy didnt even fall. but he wasnt wearing a helmet!! i swear,  these dutch people look at me like im crazy when i ride with it on, but its for a very important reason! but yeah, the boy just rode off and the car went on its way. so i went the way rob told me to and i waited for him at the gas station and he came on his bike and we went to his place. and funny enough, he told me i was easy to spot because i was wearing a helmet! i finally arrived at 7:50 pm, riding 24.07 mi (even though it was about 12 mi away) max 14.3, avg 7 mph. rob and emmy asked if i wanted to shower or eat first and i said i wasnt even going to shower because ive been wet all day, i wanted to just get dry! so they had prepared dinner but were waiting for me, so that was real kind. i ate alot! and then they told me that they spent time in the US, they hiked the applachian trail, and other mountain range on the west side. i think theyve seen more of the US than I have! so i was a bit jealous of that. they were real nice and friendly thank god, because i was so tired and stressed after my bike ride. then rob said his sister just had a baby, so he made this cute picture (not sure if he painted it or what) of animals and other baby type things for his nephew. rob had also done some bicycle touring and stayed with warm shower hosts, and he said he used to be a veggie but he stopped during that trip because (like me) he didnt want to inconvenience his hosts who wanted to cook meat. and even after he came home he continued to eat meat.but he said he got annoyed with people asking him all the time why hes a veggie and they would say 'oh but you still eat fish right?'and he was like 'of course not!" so yeah he got frustrated from that all the time and i was ''like yeah i know what you mean!!''  then they were going to a movie for the rotterdam film festival that night, so good thing i didnt arrive too much later! so they left soon after dinner and i made the couch up and read some of my lonely planet book on the history of the netherlands. apparently in 2009 it was NYCs 400th birthday (again another important celebration that i missed!) and the netherlands sponsored a lot of the events that went on and a lot of dutch people attended and a lot of manhattanites ignored the celebrations. i find that hard to believe though. and i also read that the press and tabloids keeps out of the business of the royal family. a concept unthinkable in england!! so then i went to bed cause i was wiped out!