Leiden

I traveled to the city of Leiden on Thursday, which is about a half-hour train ride from Amsterdam. Along the way, I noticed that there were bicycle paths that track the highway. I tried to take a picture, and this is how it came out:

Once I got to Leiden, I headed a science and medical museum called the Museum Boerhaave. This museum is situated in a former almshouse (one of the many for which Leiden is well known). It was a very interesting place and I saw what is thought to be the world's first pendulum clock, invented by Dutchman Christiaan Huygens. I also saw some of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes. The microscopes were so tiny, that at first I actually walked right past them. A docent later directed me to their location. One of the more interesting parts of the museum was the surgery gallery featuring animal and human skeletons as the spectators.

My next stop was the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum. The Pilgrims left England and spent 11 years in Leiden before embarking on the Mayflower due to the tolerant culture that has been part of Netherlands history for centuries. Every Thanksgiving, there is a special celebration in Leiden acknowledging the Pilgrims and their role in history.

The museum was a house furnished with period furniture. According to the guide, who was once a visiting professor of art history at Arizona State University, the house could be the oldest in Leiden. The apparent owner of the building lived upstairs. She had been supervising a construction project on the adjacent building whose door, according to the professor, had not been opened for 400 years. I saw something that looked like modern plumbing, so maybe I misheard? The owner allowed me to look around her abode upstairs, which is not normally opened to the public, on the condition that I take no pictures. All in all, I found the museum interesting. It was very cozy and lit by candles. There were some portfolios relating the story of the Pilgrims and their involvement in Leiden. As I was leaving, some Americans arrived and announced that they were the Cooks. I'm not sure if they had made a special appointment or if they were descendents of the Pilgrims.

Doesn't that look like modern plumbing on the left?

After the museum, I passed a covered bridge that was once used by merchants. I then walked to the area of Leiden which houses the law faculty. On my way back to the train station I stopped in an antique shop that had several antlers for sale. I purchased a pitcher that the seller advised was French. I really liked it because it reminds me of pitchers that one sees in still-life tableaux.

the bridge & the pitcher