The last piece of the jigsaw
May. 15th, 2018 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe missing link in the account of our European adventures last Easter is the day we spent in Utrecht. That's a day in the sense of 24 hours: our strategy is to give ourselves one last stopover reasonably close to the ferry, and we had chosen Utrecht as the place to do this. As it turned out, the drive from Aachen to Utrecht, and the following day from Utrecht to Amsterdam were both quite straightforward, giving us the afternoon of our first day to explore, and the following morning for a return visit.
Our hotel was on the edge of the town, but next to a bus stop. We arrived on a Sunday, which meant that a single bus ticket was valid for the return journey, and the bus driver stamped the date on our tickets by hand. We stayed on the bus a stop too far, and were carried off into a wilderness of shopping malls, building sites and bike parks. We alighted at the railway station, which was all three of those things, and navigated our way back. The bike parks were spectacular, as big as car parks with the bicycles stacked two or even three deep. It would take a very special kind of photograph to do them justice. But here's a photo with a few token bikes in it, for politeness sake:
It was easy enough to find the Tourist Office, and to pick up a leaflet with a walking guide to the city: it cost 3€, and while that seems quite a lot for two sheets of A4, however glossy, it kept us entertained all afternoon, and took us places we would not have found without it, which adds up to good value.
It didn't tell us that Utrecht is the site of a Roman fort, Castellum Trajectum (hence the name). I only found this out as I stepped across a broad brass strip set into the cobbled street, and realised that the line meandering across it was very familiar, and that word was 'Aesica': the outline of the Roman fort was marked with a map of the Roman frontier that is Hadrian's Wall.
Our leaflet did tell us the names of the many alleyways running from the canalside to the main street behind: the shorter the alley, the longer the name:
The sack carrier reminds you that you are in Zakkendragerssteeg. This was all very quirky, but I began to weary of walking down one alley, doubling back and walking down the next: I enjoyed the good stuff but I didn't need to trace every line and every crossing. Then, after all this intricate retracing, the route started to take us away from the commercial center: we paused in a bar (Jozef, in fact) where the wifi password is MAGIKEENBIERTJE (translation: IWANNABEER). There were interesting residential streets under interesting skies:
At the furthest point of our walk came the best thing:
De Zeven Steegjes is an area of social housing built between 1840 and 1860 (and renovated in 1995), and my picture doesn't do justice to its charm: it had the peaceful atmosphere I had liked in the Begijnhof in Ghent. I was sufficiently revived to enjoy the walk back along the canal to the bus stop.
The bus dropped us on our doorstep, there was a restaurant next door to the hotel, there was asparagus soup...
...and the next morning we packed the car and left it in the hotel's car park, and took the bus back into town. We headed for the Domtoren, because we'd kept seeing it yesterday from behind things, and wanted a proper view (you can climb up, I think, but that didn't tempt us):
Nearby is the cathedral, with a delightful formal garden in the cloister: you can just see it here, through the window of the café
That's a very neat logo design on the cup! This disreputable fellow:
is François Villon. I don't know why; did he have any connection with Utrecht? Nearby, this enigmatic back door:
I loved the way the canal creates a whole other street level below the actual street, and took several pictures of doorsteps with their pots of flowers at water level. But this minimalist scene intrigues me. The little sculpture in the bridge corner shows a figure paddling a tiny coracle of a rowing boat.
The Speelklok (musical clock) museum claimed to be closed on Mondays, and we discovered that this was untrue in time to lunch in their café, but too late to consider a visit. Maybe another time.
And that was that. Ready for another holiday now.
Our hotel was on the edge of the town, but next to a bus stop. We arrived on a Sunday, which meant that a single bus ticket was valid for the return journey, and the bus driver stamped the date on our tickets by hand. We stayed on the bus a stop too far, and were carried off into a wilderness of shopping malls, building sites and bike parks. We alighted at the railway station, which was all three of those things, and navigated our way back. The bike parks were spectacular, as big as car parks with the bicycles stacked two or even three deep. It would take a very special kind of photograph to do them justice. But here's a photo with a few token bikes in it, for politeness sake:
It was easy enough to find the Tourist Office, and to pick up a leaflet with a walking guide to the city: it cost 3€, and while that seems quite a lot for two sheets of A4, however glossy, it kept us entertained all afternoon, and took us places we would not have found without it, which adds up to good value.
It didn't tell us that Utrecht is the site of a Roman fort, Castellum Trajectum (hence the name). I only found this out as I stepped across a broad brass strip set into the cobbled street, and realised that the line meandering across it was very familiar, and that word was 'Aesica': the outline of the Roman fort was marked with a map of the Roman frontier that is Hadrian's Wall.
Our leaflet did tell us the names of the many alleyways running from the canalside to the main street behind: the shorter the alley, the longer the name:
The sack carrier reminds you that you are in Zakkendragerssteeg. This was all very quirky, but I began to weary of walking down one alley, doubling back and walking down the next: I enjoyed the good stuff but I didn't need to trace every line and every crossing. Then, after all this intricate retracing, the route started to take us away from the commercial center: we paused in a bar (Jozef, in fact) where the wifi password is MAGIKEENBIERTJE (translation: IWANNABEER). There were interesting residential streets under interesting skies:
At the furthest point of our walk came the best thing:
De Zeven Steegjes is an area of social housing built between 1840 and 1860 (and renovated in 1995), and my picture doesn't do justice to its charm: it had the peaceful atmosphere I had liked in the Begijnhof in Ghent. I was sufficiently revived to enjoy the walk back along the canal to the bus stop.
The bus dropped us on our doorstep, there was a restaurant next door to the hotel, there was asparagus soup...
...and the next morning we packed the car and left it in the hotel's car park, and took the bus back into town. We headed for the Domtoren, because we'd kept seeing it yesterday from behind things, and wanted a proper view (you can climb up, I think, but that didn't tempt us):
Nearby is the cathedral, with a delightful formal garden in the cloister: you can just see it here, through the window of the café
That's a very neat logo design on the cup! This disreputable fellow:
is François Villon. I don't know why; did he have any connection with Utrecht? Nearby, this enigmatic back door:
I loved the way the canal creates a whole other street level below the actual street, and took several pictures of doorsteps with their pots of flowers at water level. But this minimalist scene intrigues me. The little sculpture in the bridge corner shows a figure paddling a tiny coracle of a rowing boat.
The Speelklok (musical clock) museum claimed to be closed on Mondays, and we discovered that this was untrue in time to lunch in their café, but too late to consider a visit. Maybe another time.
And that was that. Ready for another holiday now.
