We will then go to Den Haag via Delft, to visit its Municipal Museum.

Flower Garden of a Private Farm, Lisse

We drove 20 minutes from the hotel and arrived at the farm. What a vast flower garden of tulips! It awakened me at the moment.
Maybe favored with hazy weather after the rain last night, the refreshing scenery looks elegant. Is this really a private farm? Where do they deliver the harvested tulips and how?
Mr. Mark, the head, says, "Flowers are now at their best four weeks late this year."　

Keukenhof Tulip Park, Lisse

The guide, in the bus, says the same with Mr. Mark of the farm as follows.
"Keukenhof's tulip and flower blossoms came out four weeks late this year, and they are now at their best!"
Is it because of the abnormal weather nowadays? Whether we may be glad or not anyway, we are at least lucky!
In fact, according to their HP, "Have you ever seen more than 7 million tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, all in bloom?"
Keukenhof means "Kitchen Yard," and is open only in spring.

This area belongs to the dune belt near the North Sea Coast, where bulbs grow well. Making full use of this merit, they say, millions of bulbs are in bloom for 8 weeks every year.

Tulips were brought here from Turkey, their original home, in the 16th century. How are they now in their home country?

What a magnificent flower park! Why is it in full bloom now? According to Ms. H, the tour conductor, "the difference in soil rank" system is adopted at Keukenhof so that they plant late-blooming flowers, early-blooming ones and crocuses, piling up one after another. As a result, three kinds of flowers can be made to come out on the same ground by turns within the season. The flower layout in the vast park is for the rotation of the soil and stability rather than for the change of image.

"Why can we see the full bloom here everywhere even out of season now?" Yes, indeed, Ms. H. I got the hint from you..
We entered the beautiful windmill and went up to the top. The distant view of the whole park was also super.

Delft Pottery Studio (De Porceleyne Fles)

At Delft where Vermeer was born, we visited the long-established pottery studio with "Royal" crown in the name.

Reproduction of Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" of the same size by the pottery art

Concerning Vermeer, he lived most of his life in this town Delft.
One of his works "The Little Street" displayed in Haag Municipal Museum was seen like the scenery just around the artist's home. However, no cameras were allowed because of the ones borrowed temporarily from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshais.

Den Haag

We saw the sights of Den Haag, the administrative capital of the Netherlands for nearly 3 hours from 3:00 pm.

Haag Municipal Museum
(Haagse Gemeentemuseum)

The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshais which we were really eager to visit was closed because of restoration. Though I might want to say "Unlucky", we could see the famous pictures there without a hitch, as most of them moved here temporalily as I mentioned above. However, Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" was said to be travelling in the United States. I remembered I saw it in Tokyo sometime ago.

Cameras with no flash were allowed for the pictures here, but "No Cameras" for the ones of Mauritshais. I bought its photo book to make up for it.

I don't like to copy and paste the pictures of all rights reserved from anywhere, however, allow me to reprint Vermeer's "View of Delft" from Wikipedia, as I realized that this picture was his hometown itself.

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Is the wide pond in front of the museum "art" or a garbage dump?

The special feature of this museum is said to be the collection of Piet Mondrian, Dutch modern artist. You can see his two pictures below.
In addition, there were pictures of my favorite artists like Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Vassily Kandinsky, etc.

Binnenhof (Diet Building）

It used to be the palace of Graf von Holland. It has been the building of the Diet even now under the Kingdom since "Republic of the United Netherlands."
Binnenhof is the center of the town. We walked around the square in front. Then we had dinner at the restaurant at the corner.