Leeuwarden to Utrecht

 Today we left Leeuwarden. But before I leave it in the Blog I wanted to touch back to our hotel.

This was our hotel which has an interesting history. The city of Leeuwarden was a Royal City and as a result there was a palace built. It was mostly used by the regional Steward. The building was originally built in the 1500s over time it was enlarged and remodeled. In 1971 it was sold and converted into the hotel it is today. 

We caught an easy train to Utrecht and got in around noon. We spent a while walking around the town.

Utrecht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. It was thought Germanic peoples lived in the city as far back as 2000 BC. The city “took off” in 50 AD when the Romans built a settlement here. A branch of the Rhine River made the town important and it was in competition with Amsterdam for centuries until the Golden years of the Netherlands when Amsterdam grew much larger than Utrecht. The canals in the old part town date back to the 800s and were designed to have basement entry and storage. Today many are used as cafes. There are some interesting doorways though..

Need to watch the first step…

One of the big features of the skyline in town is the Dom tower..it is the highest church tower in the Netherlands. It’s building was started in the 1300s. It was built with a large church The Dom Church. The church was a large Catholic Cathedral until the Reformation when the city counsel turned the church over to the Protestants.

This is a picture of the church and tower arrangement after completion. Unfortunately in 1674 what sounds like straight line winds blew out most of the church nave. (The yellow highlighted area) the tower amazingly was unaffected. The destroyed part was never rebuilt. 

It is still an amazing building. The tower is currently under going major restoration over 3-4 years. 

You can’t really get any sense of what the tower looks like with all the scaffolding around the tower. 

We spent a little while walking along the old city Ramparts. 

Tomorrow is off early to the airport. Our flight is already delayed an hour…hopefully not more as we want to get back to Michigan at a reasonable time tomorrow.

Peace,

Dale and Ila