6-9 September Howard arrived back at the boat on Tuesday and Wednesday we put aside for getting organised after our trips. It rained most of the day so it was a good day for that. So on Thursday we did the trip to Gouda arriving in time for lunch on the boat. Originally we planned to stay only 2 nights, but we decided to extend our stay as Saturday was Monuments Day, which meant we could go inside a range of buildings in the town that aren't usually open to the public. Also on Sunday morning there was to be a swimming race right past our boat, which sounded like it might be fun to watch - but also the locks would be closed that day to ensure the safety of the swimmers. But the highlight of the weekend was a visit from our good friends Mike and Sophie and their kids, Alexander and Amelia. This may be the last time we see them in the Netherlands as they are moving to Australia in October/November. It was great to catch up and have them stay the night. Gouda has a very pretty market square, dominated by the stadhuis (town hall) which is built in the middle of the square - we heard it was to avoid the fate of the previous one which had burnt down after there was a fire in a neighbouring building. As part of Monument Day we went for a guided tour, however it was all in Dutch so we didn't understand all the histry being explained, but we still enjoyed seeing the magnificent rooms. I especially loved the room wallpapered in tapestry. During July and August they have a cheese market similar to the ones we'd seen in Edam and Alkmaar. And the Waag - the cheese weighing house - was also on the main square, lined up with the stadhuis. The Sint Janskirk (St John's - for John the Baptist) was another fabulous building in Gouda. It is the longest church in the Netherlands, and it has some amazing stained glass windows going back to the 1600s. The windows were saved by the forward thinking of the town twice. During the reformation they removed the statues etc and had a guard put on the church to protect the windows. In the second world war they dismantled the windows and packed them away in wooden boxes and hid them. Amazingly they were fully reinstated by about a year after the end of the war. Another interesting thing was that they got people to donate the money for the windows and they were then included in the window, usually in the donors section at the bottom. They got the King and Queen of Spain to donate for windows only about 10-20 years before the 80 years war when Netherlands went to war with Spain to claim their independence. Not all of the windows had religious themes so it was a very interesting church. Well worth the visit. Unfortunately the swimming race was cancelled due to water quality issues, but we still enjoyed spending time in this historic and interesting town.
1 Comment
Hilary
9/9/2018 08:21:14 pm
Happy memories for me... Our dog, Emme, had 6 months with a foster family in Gouda waiting out UK quarantine when I took a job in London, and we used to visit her for weekends!
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