Delft

Hey everyone, it feels good to be updating more often again. I hope all of you enjoy reading my posts as well. Last Weekend, during vacation, an exchange student and I went to Delft together. He is one of the exchange students that I don't know very well, but I got to know him better last weekend when we went to Delft together. Anyway, Delft is one of the most beautiful cities I have visited in the Netherlands so far. For those of you who know about the famous blue pottery than you should know that it comes from Delft. Surprisingly, we didn't actually go in any places that actually sold the pottery. One of the reasons being that we only saw 2 places that actually sold stuff like that. Okay, so I will try and recap the day as best I can. We arrived at the Delft train station at about 11:30. From there we walked to the center of the city. That is when I actually was able to see how beautiful the city was. The population of Delft is about 95,000 people (I just thought I would throw that random fact in there). It is a decent size with a few cool shopping streets. I particularly like Delft because it is very quiet and peaceful even though it is where a lot of students attend college. It was so easy to get around because of the small crowds. Normally when you go to famous towns like Delft, it is flocked with tourists and things  like that, but maybe my friend and I got lucky. Anyway after walking around for about an hour we decided to get something to eat. We went to McDonalds (why, I don't know but it sure was good). Since I can never stop talking about food I will tell you what I ordered. I ordered a stroopwafel mcflurry. I think I have tried to explain what a stroopwafel is before but it is really hard to say what it is. Let's just say that is a really good tasting cookie kind of thing. So as you may have already guessed, they put that in the mcflurry. My goodness, I am going to miss that mcflurry when I go back to the USA. After McDonalds, we walked around some more trying to decide what to do. In a really nice center square, there is a beautiful Church called the Nieuwe Kerk. When we went in, we had a choice to pay 2 euro to go inside and look at some art work, or 2 euro to climb the tower. We obviously decided to climb the tower. Personally, I have never been in a church tower before so it was quite an adventure and quite a trip climbing up the stairs. We were able to go outside and that was when the excitement/adrenaline really kicked in. First of all, it was extremely windy so it felt like we were about to blow over the railing and we must have been about 100 meters off the ground. Normally, I am not one to be scared of heights, but this time I was. I soon got over that though once I looked at Delft from a higher point of view. Delft looks amazing when you're above it. It literally took my breath away (but I also may have been out of breath because of all the stairs). I have to say that it was one of the most exciting and most memorable moments of my exchange so far. After that, we just continued walking around Delft and taking pictures like tourists do. We left delft about 5 to go to Leiden so I could visit my host family from the DOC. It was so nice seeing them again. They really made that week a lot better for me and much easier. My friend and I were invited to have dinner with them so we stayed til about 8:30 and than it was back to the train station. Fortunately for my friend it was only about a 5 minute train ride for him and for me it took about 3 and half hours to get back. I really don't mind though because the time goes by fast and I am here to enjoy as much as I possibly can. I will try and update again soon.