Delft market square and New Church

 We next walked up the canal where the city was out for a market of antiques and stuff.  I have to admit that when I see these antique markets in Europe, I get excited and think that I’m going to find something awesome, but it never happens.  It seems just like those seedy flea markets at home, where you

  just believe that these people just should have thrown this stuff away, but what do I know?  We got to the market square and their city hall was medieval and beautiful.  We went into the New Church and got to see what we think was the stained glass window the lady on the tram was talking about with her 

 father’s name on it (if that was her father, not sure after the Czar comments) and William of Orange’s tomb with his dog that died two days after him at his feet.  Of course, this church has the second tallest tower in the Netherlands and you could climb it, which we did.  This was by far the scariest, hardest climb we 

have had.  Not only was it over 370 stairs which makes that the most this trip I think, but they were a tight spiral with uneven widths, depths of the stairs and then they went from stone to wood planks that you could feel give in when you stepped on them.  All I could think about was going right through the wood and falling to my death.  Not only that, but these planks had

 nothing in between them, so you could see the empty space below and they also made up the pole that you were holding onto in the middle.  I just knew that we were going to die, no room for anyone to get past, it was atrocious and I think the end of my tower climbing on this trip.  We did make it to the top in time for the bells to toll and get a great view of Delft, but in the pouring rain, it

 didn’t look anything like Vermeer’s View of Delft that we had seen at the Mauritshuis the day before.