Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights:#1 I was 20 years old when I bought a bicycle in Amsterdam and cycled southwest across the Low Countries on what would be the final leg of a journey that took me from Dubrovnik on the Adriatic to Ben Nevis in Scotland. I was on my second day out when the light began to fade and the drizzle turned the road under my tires slick.#2 The churches of Delft are decorated with paintings of the interiors that date from the seventeenth century, when the town was Protestant and the Catholic religion was being purged. Vermeer was a headman of the artisans’ guild of St. Luke, and he enjoyed a position of honor in the town militia.#3 Vermeer’s paintings are the only way to step into his world. However, none of them remain in Delft. They were sold after he died or carted to auctions elsewhere, and now are dispersed among seventeen different galleries.#4 The story of Delft is similar to that of Shanghai, if we consider the two cities’ histories from a different perspective. Delft was built on land that had once been under the ocean, and it depended on water sluices to drain the bogs on which it rests.