Day 15 ~ We Trekked in Utrecht

A couple of notes about our apartment in Amsterdam before we leave the city… Here is the outside of our apartment, which we didn’t have a picture of before:

Daniel meant to get some footage of the crazy stairs – they are insanely narrow and steep, and they follow a sharp curve. For the upper two floors, we actually walk down them backward like a ladder. We wonder if all apartments have similar stairs?

Also our view at night is lovely – the surprisingly boring ballet theater is much more appealing lit up at night, and the city and river always looks just great with apartment and boat lights twinkling.

But we are on our way out of town! We headed to the university town of Utrecht, 27 minutes away. Getting off the train, it was shockingly modern – were we in the right place? The change is total and dramatic; you step from one side of the street, into what looks like an alley, and you pop out in 1621. It’s absolutely wonderful. It starts like this:

And turns into this:

Our experience with Netherlands canals is not extensive, but we’d seen Amsterdam and Haarlem and these Utrecht canals were thrillingly different. The other canals we saw were a row of buildings, a sidewalk, a street, bike parking, and a canal that just drops straight down into the water, like this:

Utrecht was different. At the street level are shops and apartments like you’d expect to see, but then the canal drops down to a wharf, with businesses and apartments under an arched roof built into the brick. The overall effect is absolutely enchanting to see. Also really fascinating to think about, when canal transport was in full swing in the past.

This is just a really pretty town, so here’s a look at it:

As you can see, many enterprising Utrecht businesses have gone to canalside cafe seating. Some canals were more active than others, but the wharves (is that the plural of wharf?) continued along nearly every canal in town. The less-active ones appeared to be completely available to the citizens of Utrecht, with people lounging canalside without having an obvious claim to be there. You can just use the canals because they’re nice, not because you own them.

We stopped for breakfast at a very nice but unremarkable vegetarian restaurant, then went on to probably Stef’s single favorite thing of the day. This one’s for you, Mom: A library that used to be a giant, magnificent post office.

This was the library Stef had been looking for. Situated in a grand historic building, but wonderfully updated and useful. And so beautiful.

The children’s library was pretty fun. They had a big statue of Miffy, a totally adorable character from a series of Dutch children’s books, which Stef has gotten pretty fixated on. It turns out that Utrecht is full of Miffy – the author is from Utrecht.

The library was at least 4 stories, and the view from the top was grand. We didn’t want to crowd the university students, so our photo options were limited, but here is one view we got:

We started walking up and down the canals, which were lovely just to be around. Found more Miffy in a park:

We were fortunate to be in town on market day, and it was a very cool market with lots of clothes, and all the good European foods: bread, cheese, meat, produce, and we got ourselves some dried fruit.

We also got our first proffitjes of the trip, which are tiny little pancakes griddled up in a lake of butter, topped with powdered sugar. The purveyor was kind of a Soup Nazi guy with a bunch of rules about his stand, including no photos, but it’s neat to watch them be made in their purpose-built cast iron pans.

We walked around town a little more…and more…and more. We found a little hofje courtyard that was being enjoyed by several citizens, this one behind a very bright and cheerful bookstore.

We were ready for some canalside lounging, so we descended to one of the wharf cafes to sit a while. We had some very…challenging…tonic-based drinks. We watched pedal boaters, stand-up paddleboarders, and kayakers enjoying the water. We contemplated doing something on the water ourselves, and tried to make it happen, but it didn’t work out. Still, it was a very pleasant way to spend half an hour.

And then…we got to see inside one of these businesses nestled in the brick. The big archways you see to the right of Daniel are all former medieval warehouses, hundreds of them throughout the city. These things are insanely cool. I wish we’d explored a lot more of them.

We walked a bit more, then did like the locals and just picked a canal to sit by for a lunch of gouda sandwiches we’d brought with us. Lunch with a view. And a cat, a coy Siamese fellow.

We had seen some interesting structures from the upper stories of the library, so set out to find an unusual water tower we’d seen. We looked and looked – the thing was massive, how were we not seeing it when we were only blocks away? Then we turned a corner, and there it was.

It even came with a friendly tabby cat, maybe our friendliest of the trip so far.

We spotted a windmill in the distance, and headed over there. This was by far the biggest windmill we’ve seen on the trip! Super tall, built from brick, unlike the many wooden ones we had seen, and beautifully maintained, with a butcher shop in the bottom.

And with that, we were ready to wrap it up. We headed to Dogma Hotdogs, which specializes in gourmet-topped sausages. Interesting and satisfying, and the best fries we’d had since our first day in Brussels. And again, we are so pleased that nearly everywhere has a non-alcoholic beer that is miles better than almost anything you find in the States.

Our 27-minute train ride home was uneventful, if crowded, and full of university students headed into Amsterdam for a good time on a Friday night. We, on the other hand, were headed to bed.