Now surrounding the palace and it's fancy gardens is a beautiful and quite big park. After visiting the palace I did not have a whole lot of time to visit that park, but I did want to go through at least part of it, so I went on one of the mapped out walks that they have there and at least got to get a good impression of its beauty.
I have to admit that as much as I enjoyed the palace and gardens with all their grandeur it was the park that actually stole my heart. Much more my style if you know what I mean. I guess I'm just not fit to be true royalty! ;-)
Here's an impression of what the park looked like.
What I really liked about the park is that there was a surprise around every corner. Little bridges, little buildings, ponds, hills with benches on them, things like that. I only saw about half of it, so I'm going to have to return some day and do some of the longer walks that are set out there. I'm already looking forward to it.
Now the second day of my trip I went to the city of Deventer for their annual book fair. It is said that this is the largest book fair in all of Europe. I don't know if that's true, but it's pretty big. All around the city center are stalls with books, books and more books. Mostly second hand. The total length of the market/fair is about 6 kilometers (4 miles). I actually didn't make it through the entire thing in one day, but I still got my fill of books.
I did not take many pictures that day, because it's a very popular and busy book market and...well...I was too occupied looking at books!
The cool part about a book market like this is that there is room for everything you can possibly think of. It also makes you realize that saying 'I don't like to read' or 'I don't like books' is just as silly as saying 'I don't like music'. There are so many subjects, genres and perspectives both in fiction and non fiction, that it's just impossible not to find anything you like at all. If you don't like books as a general thing that just means you haven't found your niche yet. ;-)
Anyway, I found plenty of stuff to like, but I kept myself specifically to what I call source books. By that I mean books with imagery that can inspire my art. It just so happens there was a colouring book stand there as well that sold four books for ten euro's and well, I couldn't resist that, since colouring books to me are pretty much just source books for line art.
Anyway, here's my loot of the day:
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| On the top the second hand books, on the bottom the colouring books. |
I bought eight books with lovely illustrations in them. There's only seven in the picture, because one of them somehow got overlooked when I took it, but it's also a book on ornaments and alphabets. The picture also shows a quick look of the insides, so you can see why I love them. I think my favorite is the 'Spotting Birds' book which cost next to nothing and has the most beautiful bird illustrations in it.
All in all I was pretty content when I went back to my hotel that night.
I traveled home the next day, so it was a short trip, but it felt like I had been on a little vacation none the less. I really should take these short trips more often as they really recharge my batteries so to speak, so I'm already contemplating my next options.
For now I hope you have enjoyed a little vicarious weekend trip with me and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.