Last week, summer finally made its entrance and I am so happy to go outside again! I’ve made plans and filled up my planner for the summer! So far, I’ve visited Delft and Utrecht. Other plans I made, are seeing a Bob Ross exhibition, taking a walk with Alpaca’s and of course our roadtrip to Nice. I’m excited, I love it when the sun is shining again and we can do fun things!
Anyways, I’ve talked a little bit about Delft already. A beautiful city centered between Rotterdam and The Hague, that looks a lot like Amsterdam, minus the tourists. Besides wandering the city, having lunch and visiting the library (check out my earlier post), we also visited the botanical gardens.
In the Netherlands, botanical gardens are usually part of a university. Last year, I visited the gardens in Utrecht, which were part of Utrecht University. The ones in Delft were part of the TU Delft (Technical University). It was hard to find the entrance as Google Maps had the wrong entry point, and we walked around the gardens before finding the entrance, which of course, was on the other side from where we started walking. We didn’t mind, though, because it was sunny and we had time.
I always love visiting gardens like these. They’re so peaceful and quiet and usually beautiful, with birds flying around, butterflies and bumblebees everywhere. Unfortunately, the gardens in Delft were a lot smaller than I’d hoped, and also a lot less elaborate than others I’ve seen before.
But we did find pretty flowers! There was a section on almost-extinct plants that were really pretty, and also there were flowers and bulbs in the entire area.
I must say these were not the best botanical gardens I’ve visited because they were really small and there wasn’t that much to see. The gardens in Utrecht had ponds, fountains, a small bamboo forest and glasshouses filled with butterflies. There was mention of glasshouses in this garden too, but they were closed because of covid. I don’t think I even saw them. We did see a lot of ‘restricted area, only for employees’ signs, which was no fun.
I think we only spent about an hour inside. There was one restricted area that seemed to be rented out and when we were there, the people there seemed to have brought in a marching band! I’m not even kidding. We were enjoying the peace and quiet when we suddenly heard a trombone playing! Soon the other instruments followed. It was not like they were horrible, it’s just that you don’t except to hear that in gardens like these. We quickly left.
I would definitely recommend paying a visit to Delft, but I’d skip these gardens. They are pretty, but there’s another park nearby that’s free and I think I wouldn’t pay the €6,- entrance fee again. It was okay for one time, we did enjoy the sun and the pretty flowers and I’m glad we went, I just don’t feel the need to visit them again, whereas I’m pretty sure the botanical gardens in Utrecht could become a regular spot for me.
Wanderlust Wonderland 