The Free Weekend

This trip has been packed full of experiences. Most of them were good, but they left very little in the way of time on our own. That changed last weekend, however, when we had a whole 2 days to ourselves to do whatever we felt like doing! Some students elected to use this time to travel to elsewhere in Europe (generally it seems France was the go-to spot), but about half of us elected to stay in the Netherlands: I was one of them, and it was a good time! I didn't actually take many pictures, so Jaime is actually to thank for most of what's here.

To start off the weekend, Delft gave us a certified downpour for the whole of the morning, meaning we couldn't really do much without the risk of getting drenched. So, Jaime and I went on a walking tour of ceramics around the city, or at least part of it. The full thing was about 3.5km, but we only went around the last few since neither of us really felt like doing that much walking after having done so much the previous few days. Eventually, we determined that these white tiles in the ground seemed to be a part of the route, though they were infrequent enough that they probably weren't meant as a guide.

There were some things we didn't get to really see since they were either in a (pretty expensive!) museum or a building that was closed at the time. We did get to see the Tile Men, the Hamtunnel, and the Delft Blue Cow, pictured below in that order.

We then went to rent boats for a few hours at Wilhelmina Park, but unfortunately the place was fully booked out for a wedding so instead we just explored a bit around the lake. We found a delightful clearing under a willow tree, but elected to leave fairly quickly as there were spiderwebs everywhere.

On Sunday, a small group of us went to the beach by Den Haag. I suspect more people would have joined if it were less windy that day, but we still had fun! We ended up visiting both the main part of the beach, including a pier of sorts that had a bunch of shops and attractions (we didn't stay long because of the wind) and a slightly more remote area that required a short hike to reach before heading back to Delft in the late afternoon. We got a bit lost in Den Haag for a while, where we saw an old lifeboat docked in the canal!

We also got to see a sort of camp/playground area that had, among other things, a big wooden frog and a tree with a face carved and painted onto it that none of us were especially fond of, so no pictures were taken of it.

Once we got back to Delft, Jaime and I took the opportunity to explore a bit and wandered around the city to see what we'd find. And we were far from disappointed! The number of bizarre sights we stumbled upon was remarkable! It was a good time all around, getting to see what all there was to find!

Finally, at the end of the day we got dinner at a small restaurant called Hummus, and went back to the Social Hub to get some rest. Overall, I would say that it was a well-spent weekend, and I'm glad I chose to spend it like I did.