Delft on Saturday: Market Day and a major Bocce tournament

The Delft market was huge!

Here is one of the many cheese vendors

The fish monger:  you bought cooked and ready-to-eat fish on the left, or fresh uncooked on the right

(we bought chunks of cooked whitefish and calamari-yum)

a family navigates through the canal on their scow.

Note the mast has been dropped, and the skipper will need to duck very soon.

Inside the Oude Kerk, we see the newest commemorative plaque for Johannes Vermeer.

No one is certain exactly where in the church he is buried.

We wandered through Old Delft and took in the Saturday Market.  It seemed to be a combination flea/farmer's market, as near as I could tell.  We stopped and ate freshly cooked fish and calamari, which were both delicious.  We bought a small packet of freshly roasted mixed nuts which we later enjoyed while watching the bocce tournament.

Tim met with a woman potter who uses the same techniques as were utilized in the 1600's.  He hopes to return to interview her for part of his documentary film.  After visiting with her, we entered the Oude Kerk, we met with the gentleman who is the director of the church.  He allowed us to take a peek at the mechanism of the largest (of the 3) pipe organs, which still have the manual bellows intact, something Tim said he had never before seen in an organ.  These are usually replaced with automated bellows.  We climbed up a very precarious set of steps in order to peek into the space where this was housed.

I took numerous photos of the floor crypt surfaces.  I could stay in a place like that for hours looking at them.  The uneven surfaces, worn with time and so many footsteps across them, and all the elaborate and sometimes macabre carvings:  oh my!  I love them.

The town was a flurry of activity compared to the day before:  it seems the market and the tournament brought everyone outside!