Often I find myself without plans for the weekend until Saturday morning. It’s a result of starting work in the afternoon and working until about 9pm. I do this in order to have more time to overlap with my colleagues who are mostly in Boston and Providence. As a result, my Saturdays tend to be low-key hanging around Delft or maybe going on a road bike ride, and adventures that require more planning tend to happen on Sundays.

Anyhow, last weekend was one such weekend. I woke up with not much of a plan other than to go to the outdoor market that takes place in the town center all day every Saturday and Thursday. I had a goal of finding some gifts for people, and I also needed some groceries. The market happens to have antiques vendors as well as produce vendors and prepared food vendors.

Lately, the antiques available have been kind of lousy. Twice every week, I would be rushing to get to the library where I usually set up to work, and I would have to squeeze by small crowds of shoppers wading through the same gaudy jewelry, Dutch books, American and British records, ugly ceramics, obscure hardware that was kind of interesting but mostly useless like wall-mounted candle holders with reflectors behind them, wine bottle corking devices, janky woodworking planes, rusted ice skate blades that strap onto the bottom of regular shoes, and so on.

This time, the selection was much better. It may have also seemed that way because my attitude was also better (exact cause uncertain). I got quite a few gifts for people fairly quickly, most of which I am hanging onto until the holiday season, and all of which are secret.

However, here are a couple of interesting finds from that day.

After gift shopping, I sought out the produce vendors. They were tricky to find this time because the “markt” where they usually set up was taken over by a carnival.

It was quite odd to see this display inbetween the historic stadhuis and the Niewe Kerk. Also, the “dance zone” pictured is not really a dance zone so much as a bumper car zone. The carnival here had all the same features as an American carnival, including curmudgeonly staff who contribute to the irony of the event. I made my way around said carnival quickly and passed by some interesting bikes.

Swanky foam-lined mommy bike! That looks like a disc brake on the front, but it’s actually the ginormous heat sink on a drum brake because “hot damn, that thing will generate a lot of heat stopping with a full cargo bin”.

Quite a legit chopper. I did not expect to find that here.

Kid-sized old-fashioned Dutch bike!

Then I found the produce and prepared food vendors around the corner.

Similar to the way pharmacies here are set up, with the produce stands, there is one row of produce that is directly accessible to customers, but one has to ask the vendors to fetch the items in the row behind. I’m not sure how well it would scale and whether it is more efficient than the American “grab your own produce and then wait in a line to pay” style. Also, maybe it’s partly to conserve space? I think a large part of it is cultural though. It’s not quite as individualistic, and the vendors there can also offer advice as to what to buy. The other thing that struck me was that the produce here was quite a bit cheaper than it was at the supermarket, which makes sense since there is one less middle man between the consumer and the food. It made me realize how ridiculous the prices have become in the farmer’s markets in Providence, where the attitude seems to be “let’s extract as much money as we can from the fancy suckers who are so into eating local that they give up their Saturday mornings to shop at the market in the nice side of town”.

At first, I was planning on making another trip to the supermarket, but then as I discovered more vendors at the outdoor market like the cheese stand and the bakery stand, I realized that I could get most of what I needed there! Also, I was planning on going home to have lunch, and all the food shopping was making me hungry. I wasn’t about to buy the prepared food because it seemed not that appealing unless one is into fried herring, which I am not, but I had an epiphany that I could buy a couple of bread rolls (which cost a total of 50 cents!) and make a couple of DIY sandwiches with the cheese and avocados and mushrooms that I had just bought! I was so hungry that I ate the first one before I could photograph it, but here is the second one.

I have no idea what that wet spot near where I was siting was. It was there before I got there, honest!

I had a bit of a food coma, so I dropped of the goods at home and then went to the Delftse hout (delft wood) to take a nap.

It was not the best nap I have had because dogs who were walking by repeatedly came up to the bench on which I was napping to sniff right underneath my head. I suppose another dog peed there at some point. It is times like these when I appreciate that humans do not have a very good sense of smell in the grand scheme of things.

Then I went back through the market as it was wrapping up and got one of the last goodies from the bakery stand while they were closing – two croissants in a bag for €1. I took them to the spot pictured below to have a snack and write a bit.

Turns out that is the actual viewpoint of Vermeer’s View of Delft, and I realized that I was mistaken earlier when I thought it contained the Oostport (the only remaining city gate to Delft)! Also, I but into one croissant and realized that it had ham in it, so I spit it out and threw the rest away. I gave the second one I my flatmate, Florian.

Also, I found this at the market: