My friend, Sheila, had raved about the town. Utrecht was known as a mini Amsterdam with lots of canals and a large, lively student population.
I was able to book a great hotel (http://www.karelv.nl/en) at a discounted rate since I planned the trip last minute. The hotel had very large rooms by European standards. It was actually an old monastery located on a small compound with gardens, a wellness center and two restaurants, one of which had a Michelin star.
We arrived at the hotel very late on Friday night thanks to some terrible traffic Jim encountered on his way back from the Dusseldorf airport.
On Saturday we woke up bright and early thanks to Sabine. However, it was nice to have a leisurely morning and enjoy a wonderful breakfast in the gorgeous dining room of the hotel.
We walked into the pedestrian only part of town to do some shopping after our breakfast. The town felt like a combination of Bruges and Maastricht. It had the quaint canals and architecture of Bruges and great shopping like Maastricht.
Utrecht isn’t really a city with a ton of sights and for that reason isn’t on the typical tourist route. It is simply a quaint town with lots of great shopping, some good food and friendly Dutch people.
While shopping, I found a bag that I loved. However, not to be impulsive, I thought I’d look around a bit more before buying it. I shopped for another hour before deciding that I needed to go back and get the bag and matching wallet. Unfortunately, as I walked back into the store, a woman had my bag on her shoulder and was checking herself out in the mirror. While I waited for the woman to put it down, I pretended to look at other bags. I pointed out some of the other bags features to Jim, hoping to lure her away from the bag that was meant to be mine. Unfortunately, she wasn’t swayed and as she walked up to the counter, I asked a sales woman in vain whether they had another bag like that one. Lesson learned. When I find something I really like, I should just buy it because lots of shops in Europe have limited stock.
After the shops closed, we got some frites before heading back to the hotel to let Sabine burn off some energy. We watched some TV in bed waiting for Sabine to pass out so we could go to dinner. We almost decided to skip dinner and just go to bed since it was already a bit late. However, we rallied and found a decent French bistro which had great oysters.
On a Saturday night, the streets were teeming with students heading to bars and restaurants on their bikes. Some of the streets already had their Christmas lights up and it gave the canals a romantic feeling.
The next day was rainy so we were in no hurry to check out. We had a relaxing morning and then hit the deserted town.
Our first stop was the Dom which originally was a Catholic church. Unfortunately, it had converted to a Protestant church so the interior of the church wasn’t anything special.
Next on our list was a boat tour of the canals. It was a pretty nice tour except that the rain prevented us from taking any photos.
We had a nice lunch back at the hotel in the brassiere. We had tried to get a reservation for the night before but it was completely filled so we made a reservation for lunch. The atmosphere was better than the food but it was still a nice relaxing lunch before heading home to Bonn.
1 comment:
Time for a new post I reckon!
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