Flitting around: Delft, Breda and 's-Hertogenbosch

I've seen quite a bit of the Netherlands in the past week, visiting cities on various adventures!
On Saturday a bunch of girls and I decided to have a whimsical day out in celebration of the almost warm weather. We included bubbles and flower markets and picnics. On Tuesday I had to go and pick up my residency card from 's-Hertogenbosch, and so used that as an excuse to be a tourist there too!

Delft isn't on the map, but it's between Rotterdam and the coast.

Delft and Breda
Delft is pretty town, well-known for being superduper picturesque, and for being where the famous Dutch blue and white pottery came from. It was also home to the painter Vermeer and the lawyer Grotius. :)

When we arrived after a cruisy train ride, the weather wasn't quite the spring sunshine we were hoping for. But we wandered around quite happily looking at stuff. We hit up all the cool buildings, cooed over the flowers at the market and ate a lot of free cheese samples. Then it was picnic time!

The City Hall- used to be the Netherland's seat of government.

The statue at the back is Hugo Grotius, a bigwig in
the history of international law. Nicole and I had
an excited law nerd moment at this point. 

Picnic lunch! It was a nice spot, we waved to
rowers going past and I chased away the ducks. 

After a chilly lunch, we escaped to a cafe for hot chocolate to warm up. Afterwards, magically, the sun came out! We were so excited by this that we spent a lot of time standing still, face upturned, soaking it up. Passers by gave us weird looks.

The mother of all hot chocolates! The cream came
on a little plate so you could add it to the top
yourself. 

The New Church. This is where
the Royal family's burial vault is. 

The Old Church! You can't really tell by the pitcure,
but the tower leans two metres because of dodgy
foundations. More weird looks as we did leaning too.

Spring flowers

The cute canal streets of Delft

After the walking, we sat down next to a canal in the SUN
and blew bubbles. BUBBLES!

Once we'd had our fill of Delft, we popped back on the train home. On the way we stopped off in Breda, a cute town not far from Tilburg. We hung out in the nice park there and finished off our picnic. Nicole and I got photographed by an art student because we were wearing sunglasses aaha. There was a hen's party going on, with the bride-to-be dressed in a wedding gown and accosting guys who went past to make them dress up like a groom and take pictures with her. We also saw a cat dressed in a hoodie, and some guy in a weird go-cart. It was entertaining stuff. 

We added to the randomness by busting out the bubbles again. 

Then we carried on wandering, and stumbled across a big square with tables everywhere. So we stopped for a drink in the sun! After a leisurely lounge we trooped back to the station and headed home, quite happy with the day :)

This was a rather magical berry flavoured beer

's-Hertogenbosch on Tuesday

Possibly the most awesome name in the Netherlands, 's-Hertogenbosch is about 20mins from Tilburg. Its nickname is Den Bosch, which is what everyone tends to call it! 's-Hertogenbosch means 'the Duke's forest' and Den Bosch just means 'the forest'. 

So I got my residency card hip hip horray! Then it was off to explore. The streets of the Old Town were really lovely- cobbled and lined with old brick houses. 

St John's Cathedral
This was stunning, a classified Kanjermonument ('whopper monument')
so gets financial support from the government. 

This angel was added during a restoration. It's holding
a cellphone and wearing jeans. Apparently the phone only
has one button- it dials directly to God! 

de Moriaan, the oldest brick building in the Netherlands,
built in the 13th century

The Town Hall- 14th Century gothic architecture

Den Bosch is surrounded by almost continuous rampants. This
was a pretty cool info centre about it all, built around an old tower.

After all the walking, I stopped at a cafe by St John's for
a local specialty- the Bossche Bol. It's a big profiterole
covered in chocolate. Yum!

So that was Den Bosche. I was feeling pretty happy with my wee adventure. But I congratulated myself too early, because then it was time to head back to Tilburg...

First, my sense of direction, horrendous at best, decided to abandon me completely. So when I went to go back to the train station, I walked in completely the opposite direction! When I'd walked around in circles for an hour or so, I eventually asked someone and disorientatedly meandered in the right direction. I found it eventually, and being lost did meant I got to explore more of the city.

I was super happy to be on the train, but possibly too happy. Genius I am, I accidentally slept through my stop, and ended up in Breda! Whhoppps. Because I had zero money on me, I had to stow away without a ticket to get home. Naturally, this was also the one time I got checked. After hearing my sob story, the conductor just made me get off at the next stop. Where I waited half an hour to stow away on the next train.

It's safe to say I was really happy by the time I made it home. Who would've thought a trip so close to home would be such a mission!? 

Climbing a few rocks in Fontainebleau

The Easter bunny was French for me this year! I joined the Tilburg climbing club on their trip to the Fontainebleau bouldering area. Ten of us packed into cars, and with crash pads strapped to the back we drove to France for the long weekend.

Repping TILSAC!

Fontainebleau is a cute town about 60kms south of Paris and home to a legendary bouldering area.

The area was very French and adorable

 It was one of the first areas in the world to be developed as a bouldering spot, and is now one of the largest, with hundreds of problems. It started as an area for French Alpinists to practise their skills:

"In 1874 Ernest Cézanne created the Club Alpin Français in Paris. During hiking trips to the nearby Fontainebleau, its members discovered for themselves the magic of these sandstone boulders. As they fell under the forest's spell, they realized bouldering would be an excellent way to prepare for their future alpine expeditions." - Fontainebleau by Emmanuel Ratouis

An old pic from about 1938

Today, some of the routes are super famous, including a few quirky boulders- one looks like a dog, another an elephant :)

This is the dog boulder. People are banned from climbing it now,
because it's deteriorating. And no, it didn't look more like
a dog before. I asked :)

The landscape is pretty cool, with sandstone boulders strewn about everywhere, some in the forest and others in open areas on sand. I've since found out about the geological history of the place, which is interesting. I failed at my attempt to summarise it, but check out this video if you're wondering:

As you can imagine I was pretty excited to check the place out!

We arrived in the dark at about 2am, making me feel like I was back home with the Victoria Univeristy Tramping Club! We were camping, which I was assured is generally fine this time of year. Considering that the weather seems to have forgotten to be Spring, however, it was a slightly different story. We had a few snowflakes at one stage. But we coped with many many layers and nice big campfires. 

Fire!
Marshmallows were involved of course, but
I got really weird looks with my  'burn them
to a crisp' roasting style. Apparently the Dutch
 stick to the conservative 'golden brown' technique. 

At the campsite: the zucchini chopping contingency.

We spent three days bouldering, and it was fantastic. It was insanely awesome to be back on real rock, and I got some cool routes in. A few challenges of course, and a popped knee and sore muscles by the end of it, but so worth it.

A boulder! This one I was particularly happy to get to the top of,
hence the pic :)

Scenic lunch spot on day one

An actual climbing pic... sorry for the absence
of a hardcore upside-down action shot

Serious rock analysing. That's my serious face.

The trip was also an opportunity to test out the various uses of a crashpad...

A handy spot to lie on (we did a lot of this!)...

... in a sandwich...

.... or as a battering ram.

Because it was Easter, we included plenty of chocolate in the weekend. I got to enjoy the Dutch hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) on baguette for breakfast. We had a bit of an Easter hunt, climbing style, with Wouter hiding mini Easter eggs on routes for successful climbers to find :)

So all up it was a successful trip! On Monday we trundled back to civilisation, very happy climbers.

Our happy climber faces

Skiing the French Alps

A few weeks ago I went on a trip with the international student organisation to Risoul, France for ten days of skiing and fun! Students from all over the Netherlands went, and we had a blast.

We left on the Friday evening, and after spending about 14 hours on a bus, woke to a stunning day and the mountains!

Risoul is the red dot that says 'Risoul'

Cute wee ski village!
 I busted out my crappy French every morning
 buying a fresh baguette for lunch. 

The first day few of us skied, I hadn't booked gear for that day and so chilled out on the deck playing cards. That night I fiercely represented NZ at the 'represent your nation' party.

The next day we woke to SNOW SNOW. Over the next few days we had a preposterous amount of the white stuff. One of the days hardly any of the lifts were open because the staff couldn't get up the road. So turns out it is possible to have just too much snow! But we still got plenty of skiing in :)

The view from our room

Taking the time to dive into powder. Couldn't resist :)

 Then YAY the weather cleared! The manic ski switch was flipped. We skied in the trees, went over the hill to a sister field called VARS, found an awesome bumpy slope and skied it four times in a row...

Beautiful views

Once I'd figured out how to ski the powder, it was off piste for us!

Did I mention the weather cleared?

Sun! Everyone had evidence of the nice weather tanned into panda faces

Lunch in the sun!

It wasn't all hard work skiing however! Every afternoon was happy hour, with cheap beer and a DJ. I perfected the art of dancing on the tables in ski boots.

Being able to ski right to the bar :)

We stayed in apartments right on the field, with bars and a deck right below us. It made for easy mornings, and also easy nights when we had to go to the Yeti bars dressed whatever costume it was that night.

Toga party on the last night :)

More NZ repping!

Dinner with my lovely roommates!
Gwen's Dutch but has spent tons of time in Mexico
 and Nina and Nuri are from Kazakhstan,
so we had lots of multi-cultural convos.

Countering the effects of the elements with a facemask!
Taking rolling on the floor laughing literally as we did it :)

Last day! After skiing until visibility got horrendous,
a few of us snuck into one of the accommodation buildings
with a pool and sauna.  

 Then it was back on the bus for the long ride home. It was an epic, unforgettable week!