The last time I visited Gouda I’d been living in the Netherlands for less than six weeks. It’s taken nearly four years to revisit this picturesque town, but it was worth making the short trip – it’s a 20 minute journey from The Hague – if for no other reason than to visit the glorious interior of the medieval Gothic church, Sint Janskerk, world famous for its truly extraordinary stained glass windows. The seventy-two luminescent 16th century windows are the reason Sint Janskerk is an UNESCO World Heritage site, but it also claims the title of ‘longest church in the Netherlands’.
When I was last here in 2014 the building was closed, this time Sint Janskerk was not only open, but the winter sun was illuminating the stained glass and the vast interior space of the church. Some of the windows are 20 metres high and represent distinct phases in Dutch history, between Spanish rule and Dutch independence, and between the pre- and post-Reformation Catholic and Protestant churches. In some windows you can see Philip II of Spain, in others William of Orange. Both using the windows for their own propaganda purposes.
There is a fantastic self-guided audio tour of the church – if you visit definitely take the audio tour – which recounts both the history behind the windows and the meaning of the stained glass. Anticipating the beginning of the Second World War, the windows were removed and placed into storage in 1939. Not all of the originals have managed to make it to the 21st century and there are some modern windows, including one celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945.
We went for a wander around Gouda’s historic streets. It’s a pretty place with plenty of old buildings, including the very ornate town hall, the old cheese weighing building and numerous canals lined with merchant houses. It was Saturday and there was a market in the main square, which was a little disappointing but did at least have several cheese stalls. On a bitterly cold day, we mooched around for a couple of hours through narrow streets and along the town’s canals, until we came across the De Roode Leeuw, the Red Lion windmill, which still produces its own flour.
Ringed by an outer canal, which began life as the town’s defensive moat, the historic part of town isn’t very big and, even with a visit to the town museum, half a day pretty much covers Gouda. We made our way back to the town centre for lunch in one of the restaurants surrounding the main square. Almost every Dutch town has a square like this, and almost every square has a collection of restaurants serving up traditional Dutch fare. In Gouda that included a dish I’d never eaten before, cheese soup. Tasty and warming on a winter’s day.
Afterwards we popped into the historic Kaaswaag, the cheese weighing building, now the tourist information office and a cheese shop that offer a variety of cheese tastings. We passed up the opportunity to sample yet more Dutch cheese, instead we found another cheese shop, ‘t Kaaswinkeltje, which was serving some weird and wonderful cheeses, including a blue cheese and a black cheese. Call it heresy in this most Dutch of cheese towns, but we left with three different French cheeses.
Notes from Camelid Country 
The Dutch (are)
(I will learn typing someday)
Shows how tolerant the Dutch. French cheese in Gouda? 😉