Touring Amsterdam Part 2

Today I am sharing photos of the Amsterdam flower market and the Delft workshop that we visited as well as a few other shots.

All of the flowers were very beautiful and were fairly reasonably priced.

This shop had all bulbs but they were not certified to bring into the US so I couldn’t buy any.

While we were in the shop pictured above, the shopkeeper came over and rolled back this rack to reveal a hidden stairway to go downstairs.

Those bouquets were spectacular.

The photo above shows the back side of the flower market on the right side of the canal. It stretches down the entire city block.

We didn’t have time to visit the Delftware region but we did visit a Delftware shop. The lady above is hand painting Delftware. She gave me permission to take her photo. The little houses on the right end of the table have just been painted with an underglaze which will turn blue when fired.

I especially liked the little piece of Delftware on this door where you would push on the door. I’m not sure what that would be called but it was very pretty.

There were many beautiful tulipieres in this shop.

Some of them were almost as tall as we were. All of them were quite pricey. Even a small one was 249 Euros.

Careful examination of that little price sticker above reveals a price of 3250 Euros!!! That is about 4485 dollars! Maybe next time!

 

Here are a few other random shots.

Before we went on the trip we did lots of research. We compiled all of our hotel reservations and notes into a notebook. After our first day in Amsterdam I checked the notes when we retired to our room. I discovered that the Royale Palace was right down the street. We didn’t realize it, but we had passed by it several times.  This seemed strange to me. The next day we sat out to find it.

That is the Royale Palace! It doesn’t look very royal. In fact it was quite dirty with trash on the square in front. It needs a good pressure washing. No landscape. No guards. Nothing like our White House. Fast forward 24 hours.

When we passed by the next morning, the square had been cleaned and a temporary fence had been installed and guards were actually out front. A few planters had also been placed outside. By evening it looked beautiful.

According to the royal calendar, the King and Queen of Sweden were visiting. Apparently our invitation got lost in the mail but we did enjoy watching from the sidelines.

The top of the palace was quite distinctive.

I hope you have enjoyed the tour. I have one more post on Amsterdam before moving on.

If you missed part one of Amsterdam you can see it by clicking here. You can read about our visit to Keukenhof Gardens by clicking here and our bike ride around the flower fields by clicking here. You can also see the video that my daughter made by clicking here.