Mijn hovercraft zit vol palingen

Today was our last day in South Holland.  It's been a wonderful few days, and we've managed to explore the area pretty thoroughly.  The weather is beginning to cool, and the leaves are beginning to brown - Autumn is coming to Europe.

Very pretty!

Delft is beautiful, and we've used it as a basis of operations for the last five days.  Filled with amazing old churches and canals, it can be a li'l touristy but during the week it's been quite quiet and restful, a nice place to come back to.

It has this amazing old church whose steeple is on a substantial lean, quite amazing.  And it has some great restaurants on barges in the canals, highly recommended.  Our hotel itself is right on a canal, and you can sit and drink a glass of Grolsch overlooking these.  It's going to be rather sad to leave.

The Hague is... well, honestly it's probably worth a half-day trip if you must, but that's about it.  It's quite gray and dull all things taken into account.  We walked past all the major stuff - the Palaces, the International Criminal Court in the Peace Palace... Nice enough, but you can't get in and have a look around in any of them.  Meh.

Although if you are in town, a visit to the Escher Museum is well worth the time.  It's inside the old Queen's Winter Palace, and gives a great perspective of Escher's work.

Rotterdam is very different to both Delft and the Hague.  For a start, most of the city was destroyed during WWII, so it has been rebuilt since then.  As such, it provides a great perspective of architecture in the 20th Century.  It's a much more vibrant, alive part of the country then the Hague.

I'd recommend having lunch in the New York Hotel on the other side of the river - this is the old base of the New York / Holland Line, so was where all the migrants left to New York.  We caught up with Nick's family and they discussed their family history and its relationship to the building.  On top of this, it's a beautiful building and the food was rather lovely.  Quite busy though, so make a reservation if you can.

So tomorrow we're heading North up to Amsterdam, which means we're almost as far North as we're going (Berlin being slightly further north).  Looking forward to it!