Utrecht

The day started with a mixed looking sky that could go either way. Then it decided to rain - hard, with bits of ice in it. Fortunately it ended in about 10 minutes and the rest of the day was dry, but cold and windy. Since I had not planned ahead and brought my knitted scarf along on the trip, I had to find one in the market to keep the cold air off of my neck.

Today we visited Utrecht. A town that traces its roots back to Roman times as one of their frontier outposts on the Rhine River. The Domkerk tower dominates the center of Utrecht and you can see it in several of these shots.

The Dutch have some interesting public art. This is a skinny rabbit which seems to be emulating Rhodin's "The Thinker".

 

Saturday is a big market day in Utrecht. The is a general market, a flower market, and the "stoffen" market - cloth! We saw some of the same vendors as in Delft, but the market seemed much bigger.

The cloth market is just incredible! Everything imaginable is available and it goes on for blocks.

Every market seems to have a coffee cart that goes around and delivers coffee to the vendors. They record the orders on a cell phone to handle billing.

 

"Lunch" consisted of some Frijtes with frijtes-sauce from a walk-up vendor. Yum!!

A walk down the Oudegracht (Old Canal) took us to a great knitting shop and quilt shop.

We also visited the building which was the home to the bakery of Ernie's Grandpa Ditmar at Oudegracht 321. The building is owned by the Utrecht Monuments Association and we've learned that it's been used as apartments. It's obviously undergoing renovation, which looks like it began just last week.

We stepped inside the Domkerk for a few minutes, just before a concert was starting. This church is interesting because the tower is no longer connected to the church. In the 1500s they ran out of money because "gothic style" had gone out of favor - who knew they knew about architectural "styles" in the 1500s? A storm in 1574 destroyed the Nave, which wasn't finished. The result was that they tore down that section over the next couple of hundred years and went with an abbreviated building - which was fine with the Protestants who now owned the building and didn't care all that much about having a cross-shaped church. The tower still stands, just separated from the church.

Here's a couple of things things that I found amusing. The bridge is called "Hamburgerbruge" (Hamburger Bridge) - not a McDonalds or any other hamburger anywhere in site.

Public toilet facilties are usually not free in the Netherlands. We've discovered a chain in some shopping areas there's a chain call "2theloo" that not only provides facilities, but sells personal products. You get a receipt that is redeemable for 50 cents off of their products.