September 15 - Life in Leiden

Tuesday - Leiden
By the time we got done talking we had 3 maps of Leiden. There is a walking tour that will takes you all around the older part of town. It is supposed to be really windy today with gusts up to 40 mph in the afternoon....a good day for walking.

The bakery is just a few doors down from the cheese store. No problem finding calories today!

First stop was De Burcht, a Middle Ages defensive tower at the junction of the 2 Rhines. It is hiding behind the buildings on the main square so we totally missed it yesterday as you need to go up a side alley to find the access point.

 

It has great views of the whole area. It is already a little blustery.

Time to get a closer look at what we saw from the top.

But first a stop at the library coffee shop to warm up.

This is an example of the internal workings of all those clock towers we've seen.

The bike parking outside the local elementary school.

There are lots of interpretive signs along the walking tour and they all have an English translation which was really nice for us.

Something we didn't know. The Pilgrims left England in 1609 and came to Leiden first before about half of the them headed to America in 1620. Unfortunately, the American Pilgrim Museum is closed today. The interpretive sign says that 4 American presidents have ancestors that lived here, including Franklin Roosevelt, George Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Poetry on a large scale. This one happens to be in Japanese but we saw many in Dutch and other languages too. There are 101 of them scattered around the city

This is the oldest university in The Netherlands. It was established by William, Prince of Orange in 1575. Albert Einstein even taught here and there have been 16 Nobel Prizes associated with work done here. These are the main offices but university buildings are scattered all over town.....

.....and so are the students, 27,000 of them.

We found Rembrandt's childhood home, sort of. The house no longer exists but there is a small park with this sculpture in the middle. He lived here from 1606 to 1631.

These boats seem awfully big for the canals but there are several of them moored here and we are only about 8 miles from the North Sea by water.

Many of them have a sign that gives their history and statistics.

Lunch at the Vlot Grand Cafe - a floating restaurant at a very busy intersection of water and streets. Our timing was very good as it poured while we were eating. (13:00, 57F, 19 mph winds....so glad we aren't out in the open on our bikes!)

It looks even smaller than a SMART car!

We finished most of the walking tour on our way to the Weaver's House Museum but it was pretty drippy for taking pictures.

The house is much as it would have been a couple hundred years ago.

A list of the weavers that lived here, starting in 1561.

We went back to the hotel for a little break then headed back to the intersection where we had lunch as Doug had a photo Idea he wanted to try out there.

The modern version of using threads.

The Lakenhal was built as a center for wool cloth manufacture and trading in 1640. Leiden was widely known in the 1600's for it fine cloth of wool  They also used other fibers but wool was king so thus the palace-like building. Their fabrics were sold all over the world. Today the building houses the Municipal Museum of Leiden.

Remember those 40 mph gusts that were predicted. We aren't sure of the speed but a really big gust of wind snatched Doug's hat off his head as we were crossing this canal.

Fortunately, that same wind was blowing hard enough and in the right direction. We were able to retrieve the hat though at one point we thought it might sink before it reached us. Of course, it is one of his very favorite hats. The locals paid us no mind.

Doug did get the picture he wanted but that bald head got pretty cold and wet without his hat so we didn't stay out much longer. On the way back, Donna bought some purple tights, which made for a warmer walk to dinner at Scarlatti's later.

Thank you Leiden for being such a wonderful place to hang out!