"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." Clifton Fadiman

Yesterday I was nearly killed. Ok, maybe that's a stretch but there most definitely would have been blood. We were walking back to the train station and I stopped, turned my head to look at the beautiful scenery of Antwerp architecture and felt a soft caress across my cheek and heard the gasps of the people who love me. If I had turned my head a millisecond before or had stepped forward, as I was about to do, there would have been me with a bloody nose, or worse, me and a guy and his bike in a tangle. I'm pretty confident that I had told the kids earlier on that "bikes have the right of way". So then the "naggy" one nearly gets it. The bikes here do get the right of way, we were informed that even if you are drunk and weaving in and out of traffic on your bike and you get hit by a car, the car will be in the wrong! This bike thing is incredible however, I think more countries need to get on the ball (I'm looking at you western Canada) the town amd cities are so well designed for bikes, bike lanes, bike trails, bike parking lots. Here, we see the families heading to school and work in the am and the parent often has two kids attached, and one beside. They have all kinds of bags and seats and bags for your seats, attachments, pillows on the back for doubling your friend (there is a lot of that) It's fabulous. The people here move on their bikes like it's an attachment to their body, I love it.

We also enjoy the trains, we are learning more every time we take one and sometimes they are overwhelming, especially since rules change with every country! They are convenient though and run almost everywhere we want to go. We were on board the other day when a suspicious fellow was collecting bottles, turns out we had reason for our suspicions as we watched a young lady, her friends and train staff searching for the man and her wallet. They never found him, or her wallet but we overheard that he was a regular on their train. They had his photo and needed her to report him and they would make a report as well. She was smiling and laughing later on so she was ok but I was double checking my bag from the back of the train car! Other than that our ride from Germany to Delft was much better than the one previous. We had reservations, which we ended up not needing but it was nice to know if we did we had them! we also noticed that the first class cars usually don't fill up as fast as second class, we saw some people removed from a first class car yesterday. It's kind of weird to me to have the classes but we were given no choice when ordering, we had to order the first class one. We must be a motley looking crew because we were informed by a fellow passenger (he was also train station security) that we were seated in first class. We replied "ummm". Then told him we had first class ticket. Weird.

On another note, Delft is a large part of what I envisioned when thinking of this trip. It is quaint, adorable, historic, beautiful, architecturally amazing and did I mention ADORABLE? This house we are in is so old and fun. It feeds my romantic soul! I love going out on the cobblestones, looking at the canals and wandering the narrow streets. Went to the Vermeer museum and today want to check out the oud kerk and the nieuw kerk (churches hee hee) and another museum in town. Also some shopping seems in order, today is the big market in the square and there is tons of blue and white delft ceramic to be found. I will never be tired of museums, dragged everyone to the Rubenshuis yesterday in Antwerp, it was actually Rubens house! Isn't that amazing? I thought so, the museum itself was not as much about him as I would have liked but lots to be seen anyway, very old and very beautiful. The thing that makes me most excited about Delft is that Vermeer was born, lived, created and died here. I get so excited when I think "Vermeer walked here". He was an incredible artist, died too young and so didn't produce as much as the world would have enjoyed. Anyone remember "girl with a pearl earring"? I have the movie if you want to watch it. The artists back then had to paint from sight not from photos,  many mixed their own paints, often working with hazardous (lead etc) materials, I just find what they produced so amazing. I didn't take any photos as I like to "see" the art and when I take photos I get wrapped up in photo taking. Plus, pictures of pictures...boring. Anyway, clock is chiming it's quarter to eleven song, I am off to market! XO Wendi