Because I was traveling from a different city than my family, I decided to take a couple extra days before the family trip to Amsterdam and chose Leiden as a very manageable, low-key place to stay. I arrived early in the morning to Schipol, took the train 20 minutes to Leiden Centraal, stowed my bags at the hotel, and walked into the morning. It was Saturday so I knew I'd be able to see the market.
I wasn't ready for interaction yet so I didn't buy anything (it would have been a great idea to get food for the rest of the day but I didn't want to carry it) but saw the requisite baked goods, asparagus being peeled quickly in a glass box machine, and flowers.
The main place I wanted to visit was the botanical garden but had to wait a bit here for it to open, where I discovered that my compression socks from the plane had drifted like giant blossoms at my ankles, so I gladly took them off.
The area also has a museum of Japanese things that Philipp Franz von Siebold had brought back from his long stay and fascination with Japanese flora, fauna, and culture. I didn't go to that museum but his presence is in the gardens, for sure. This Basho poem is one of many poems painted onto the sides of buildings in this university town, and a translation that a friend found for me is: Above the rough seas / stretching herself out over Sado Island— / The Milky Way.
A bust of Siebold is behind this little structure in the Hortus Botanicus, the oldest botanical garden in the country, in the Japanese section.
These are jars in the Chinese herb section. I don't know enough about the vast Dutch history of colonization in east Asia to speak to all of this in an informed way, but absolutely this currently tiny country did a lot of questionable to terrible things to have all of these riches now (not just plants, but EVERYTHING).
Because it was a bit cool and damp before the gardens opened, I had a light breakfast in their café attached to the entry glasshouse, where they have the carnivorous plants upstairs.
There were rows and rows on a catwalk high above that made me think, maybe I do have a bit of a fear of heights that is getting worse with age, and held things like this with sticky droplets to capture prey.
I walked outside and then into the tropical greenhouses, which were full of all kinds of plants, a bit overwhelming, but on the way downstairs from another catwalk and flowering canopy, I saw this sign. Isn't this in the family of the plant whose tubers give us konjac?
There were several different species of
Amorphophallus and the most distinctive part was their spotted trunks.
Outside I enjoyed the fencing/terracing that made clever use of felled trees. They cut them up and stake them and there is your border!
After that, I just improvised what I'd see. First I walked down the nearby canal to visit Rembrandt's birthplace.
Which had a view of this windmill.
The original house was torn down so they had an artist make this public art of a child looking at a painting, and a crude portrait of Rembrandt hangs on the nearest building.
I was extremely tired by this point because of the jet lag and lack of sleep, but I figured out the next best place would be the Museum De Lakenhal. First, I lunched in the café where they had the most beautiful, fresh, and giant salad that I had to ask to wrap up, it was even too much for me (they don't have takeout containers so they improvised with foil and plastic wrap). I also loved that fresh ginger tea is a thing here, wonderful to get chunks of ginger in hot water. Anyhow, this museum gives great context for Leiden as a major textile center. These are stamps that would make the lead seals attached to bolts of fabric that were inspected before they could be sold.
The old building was built in 1640 as the cloth hall for the famous cloth produced in this city. The museum shows all aspects of this industry, aside from old master paintings, and downstairs had a contemporary project that explained all of the steps of making woolen fabrics from shearing to finishing.
An old loom, of course! Right past it was a giant contemporary metal art piece of a figure pulling warp from a loom, SO much wire and metal, must have been a bear to construct.
I'll let the tag below explain this lovely cloth:
There are little rooms off of rooms after rooms, and this one was wallpapered with this wrought leather, a huge amount of work, and made to give the effect of gilding.
I wouldn't have realized what it was if I hadn't read the tag and it reminded me of the Japanese paper versions that they made to mimic this (a sample hangs in my office right now, a better sight than my computer!).
These old sample books of fabrics are encased in this room as well. While it would be nice to be able to page through them, they already look like contemporary book art.
Another room had the giant table where they used to measure and cut fabric. What I haven't shown are all the old paintings of the dudes who were in charge of this industry and got rich from it. They are EVERYWHERE.
Each length (supposedly the length of a man's arm) was marked on the table. After this visit, I had no more energy to do anything but get back to the hotel and wait for check-in. Requisite shower, nap, and then walking through a construction area to get some pizza, fully intending to have leftovers for breakfast!
Hortus Botanicus
Museum De Lakenhal
