Utrecht, Amsterdam and Surrounds

We spent a few days in Utrecht and Amsterdam as a base for exploring some “unknown places” in the region.

This is what we found.

Kinderdijk

51°52′57″N 4°38′58″E

Ask anyone who has seen Kinderdijk, or looked at a photo or even heard about it and they will say that it is a World Heritage Listed site with Windmills. Ask the guide in the museum or listen to the commentary on the introductory film and you will find out that it is really a water management project which carefully balances the water in the canals with the water in the river to avoid both flooding of the former swamp and sinking of the recovered farmland due to drying out. The windmills are, apparently, only a tool. In fact only some of them are operational today, with the bulk of the work being done by diesel powered pumps.

Sad really. But the windmills still look good, and attract quite a few visitors to look at the windmills. Only former water engineers look at the channels and consider the hydraulics.

And they catch the sun as well as the wind

The blades are curved and adjustable

You find more than just windmills, there are bikes, clogs, and Dutch apple pie.

We really have a lot to thank the Dutch for.

On the way home, we had our first ride on a Dutch car ferry – which had more bikes than cars – saw some Gouda Cheese, at Gooda, and found some Dutch Peanut Butter. Quite a successful day at going native.

Helen and Anton Kröller-Müller Park and Museum

52°05′44″N 5°49′01″E

On the other side of Utrecht we found the Kröller-Müller park and museum. It seems that Helen Kröller inherited a very successful metals business from her father, married Anton, helped him turn it into an international success and then retired to develop a house, a park and a museum to house the extensive art collection she had amassed. She had a particular liking for the work of Vincent van Gogh, so her museum now has the second largest collection of his works, including some you may recognise.

This is a hidden wonder, and for us an unknown place which we stumbled upon.

Utrecht

52.0907° N, 5.1214° E

On the third day, we visited Utrecht. We found bells, churches, towers to climb and bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes and the odd canal.

The bells are found in the bell tower of St Martin’s Cathedral, and they rate from several hundred years old to less than 50 years old. During the second world war, the Germans requisitioned all the iron from bells to use in the war effort. The Dutch, practical as ever, classified all the bells in the country in a range from highly valuable for historic reasons to not valuable at all. They started by delivering the low value bells, and never needed to pass over the best ones. These bells are over six hundred years old and weigh 32 tonnes. You only have to walk up half of the reported 465 steps (I counted more!) in the bell tower to see them.

If you walk up the rest of the steps, you find an expansive view of the city and surrounds, including the Cathedral itself. The Cathedral is no longer connected to the bell tower, as the nave was destroyed by a high wind in 1674. This creates a place for a nice public space and an interesting statue shown in the linked photos.

From the top of the 465 (or some other number of) steps, it is possible to access a viewing platform and to see the sculpture at the very top of the tower.

but you can’t really see it from the ground!

Yes we climbed it (up the inside stairs)

Utrecht is undergoing an urban rejuvenation which includes a complete replacement of the buildings around the station to create a major shopping centre, a large square and a transport hub. The project included the removal of a road, and the opening up of a canal which had been covered in some time ago. It also includes major parking stations for bikes, although I don’t know how you find your bike when you go back to get it, unless it is yellow of course.

This easy parking, plenty of bike paths and a relatively flat landscape makes Utrecht a bike paradise. Everyone, from the very youngest to the oldest rides every day. So they become very comfortable on their bikes, to the extend that they can ride and text at the same time. I even saw one young woman texting with both hands while riding, which impressed me because I still can’t take my hands of the handle bars let alone find my phone.

look where you are going!

In spite of the urban renewal, there remains a large area of the central city which dates back to the beginning of time, or maybe just after. There are quite a few canals, and what better place to leave you bike.

Amsterdam

52.3702° N, 4.8952° E

We only spent one night in Amsterdam on the way to the train to Paris. After getting lost on the way from the station to the hotel (450m according to Google Maps and when I asked someone the way he suggested I follow the blue line in the app. It worked.), we spend most of the rest of the day watching Semi Finals of the World Cup in an Irish pub. Had some really good Irish rissoles!

Sunday brought a trip to the Rijksmuseum, where my first observation was that I could identify exactly where my pocket was picked in 1979. I survived unscathed this time.

The Rijks App with a range of tours built in was a great help, although it flattened my battery and so many hours later in Paris, I did not have a map to find the hotel! The app led me, of course, to the Nightwatch, but also to a wide range of other works including some very early wood carvings from the region and the library, which I also visited in 1979. Looks the same except that people are using laptops now.