Last weekend it was time to visit yet another Dutch city I’ve been wanting to visit, namely: Delft! Delft is located on the west side of the Netherlands, just between Rotterdam and The Hague. It’s a historical city, because it’s the place where Willem van Oranje was murdered. The city is also famous for the color blue. Delfts Blue is typically Dutch, though I must say I found little blue in the city itself.

Delft is yet another city that looks a lot like Amsterdam. There are lots of canals and small houses, but the city is way smaller than the capital and way less crowded. It also doesn’t smell like weed as much as Amsterdam does.

Bicycles, canals and bridges. It’s a really beautiful city to walk around in, especially when the sun starts shining. We spent our morning in the botanical gardens (more on that later) and then set out to explore.

The city is known for its iconic blue pottery and tilework. I suspected, and hoped, to find lots of it in the city itself. There are several Delfts Blue museums and potteries, but the are all closed now because of covid. I did find this gigantic heart in the city center. It’s not Delfts Blue, but if you squint hard enough and use a little bit of imagination, you can think it maybe represents the color in the city. There are some Delfts Blue pottery shops for tourists to be found in the city, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Besides canals, there are really a lot of beautiful buildings in the city. I’m not sure what building this is, but as it’s close to the TU (Technical University), I’m guessing it has something to do with it, though I can’t be sure as I can’t find the building on google maps and there weren’t any signs (and also, we weren’t supposed to be here, oops!)

I really wanted to visit the library. As you may know, I work in the library of Nijmegen myself, buying books for a living. Before covid started, we had a congress where someone from the library of Delft came to talk about theirs, and told us how the books were categorized, using a system designed by children who loved to visit the library. I won’t bore you with the details, but of course I wanted to see for myself. And it truly looked good. The library was innovative and playful and one area was even called the WegisWeg which is the Dutch translation for Diagon Alley.

After the botanical gardens and the library, we decided to get something to eat, so we walked towards the great marketsquare, which was packed with terraces and people. I’m thinking this is something I will have to get used to again, because crowds like this scare me. This time though, we were starving so when we finally saw a free table, we sat down and ordered lunch.

We sat down at ‘t Konings Huys. It was the only place available, but we had seen that someone had ordered nachos so we weren’t picky. I had tomato soup and boyfriend ‘shared’ his plate of nachos. The food was alright (you can’t go wrong with nachos!) but the drinks were absolutely yummy! I had a virgin strawberry mojito and boyfriend had a straight lemon. It was really good!

After lunch we walked back to our car, taking another route as to see even more of the city. It was funny because the city center was really crowded but the streets around it were quiet. We saw some people doing some kind of treasure hunt and the bigger canals were filled with the students’ rowing club but most tourists and locals seemed to be having a good time in the city square.

We had a great time. A beautiful city, the sun was shining and I was wearing a skirt for the first time in forever, there were nachos, botanical gardens, flowers and a great library. What more could a girl want?