General Impressions

Our time in Europe is over and all I can say is that I feel it was too short and that it passed too fast. We loved living in Delft, a very nice place, very quite but with enough things happening to make us enjoy the place. Since we lived in the old area of Delft, everything was very close, walking distance, as opposed to Fredericton where we need a car to do most of things. The local commerce, restaurants, entertainment, everything was walking distance.

We lived in a very busy corner, connecting the downtown area with the train station. There was always people going back and forth, and the transit of bike was intense. We needed to look twice before crossing the street, even though the local bikers can divert from you very fast. There were not many cars driving in the streets and after some time in the evening cars could not ride in most streets anyway.

We found that life was a bit more expensive if compared to Canada, even though we were lucky that the Euro devaluated during our stay there. Things like car rental, hotel, gas, restaurant were leaning towards the more expensive side, not to mention Delft Blue which is very expensive. But then there were things that were very cheap in the local commerce. We were surprised that food in the grocer's store was cheaper, things like meat, bread, cheese, to name a few.

Something we are going to miss is the variety of cheese and wine, excellent quality, three times less expensive than in Fredericton. Also, the variety of beer is amazing. Not to mention that we could purchase wine and beer in the grocer's store as it should be.

Also, the bells, which sounded regularly providing a medieval atmosphere. We would go to bed listening to them; we would wake up in the morning with them as wishing us a nice day.

The fact that the apartment we rented was small, was a benefit since it demanded less effort for its daily maintenance, besides the fact that we were away in most of our weekends visiting other places and cities.

This is something that we will miss too. We could visit Amsterdam with the same travel time we would spend to go to St. John; we could go to Brussels with the same time as we need to go to Moncton; we would be in Paris faster than if travelling to Bangor. What a difference!