Day 5: Utrecht!

Today started off with us eating our breakfast as we made our way to the train station in Maarssen – very American, I know, but we needed to make the best use of our time today as we had scheduled times for tours.

We arrived in central Utrecht and here is the map we walked past on our way to DOMunder:

We arrived for our tour at DOMunder with 2 minutes to spare…though apparently in Utrecht, that means you’re already 13 minutes late. Our guide seemed to not hold it against us by the time the tour was over, since we showed genuine interest and were respectful during her presentation.

What we saw at DOMunder was absolutely amazing – 2,000+ year-old ruins from the Roman Empire, built overtop several times from the Middle Ages onward. We held in our hands brick made of volcanic rock and brought to the region by the Romans to build their fortified walls. We also held stone used in the Middle Ages, when people in the area lost the ability to make bricks, and the stone they used was extremely heavy! There wasn’t much for rock in the area, so it all had to be hauled in from elsewhere. We saw maps constructed from the oldest periods compared to more recent, and how often similar size/shape/purpose buildings were built over ruins.

Here are the cobblestones of DOM square:

I didn’t take photos down in what they called “the basement” because it was too dark. But the setup was very interesting – we were each given flashlights with lasers, to activate audio stories fed to earpieces, telling us about the history of the place. To see pieces of the Catholic church that were taken out by a huge storm just before the Protestant reformation era, and then left as rubble for another 100+ years, really brought home how divided the community must’ve been at one time.

We were the only four English speakers on the tour, and they played the two short films in English with Dutch subtitles. I felt bad about that, but assume it was because they didn’t have the reverse available. I also got the feeling they didn’t get many English-speaking people, since I heard our guide mutter something about hoping they could get the flashlights to work in English. Thankfully they did.

Later we had lunch at Lebowski. Here’s my lovely dish, with goat cheese and pears:

And here we are, enjoying our time at Lebowski:

Here is a pretty canal that runs through central Utrecht:

Next, we wandered the streets before our following appointment (while keeping in mind that being on time meant 15 minutes ahead of time):

Then we went to our tour of DOM Tower, the highest in the Netherlands. 465 steps to the top, I kid you not – and the view was absolutely incredible from up there. Tough to get good photos, though, since they try hard to keep people from dropping things on passers-by.

Here are photos from DOM Tower: