Day 19: More spiral stairwells, and Amsterdam

Today we took a tour of the Dom Tower (the one mentioned two posts previously), where we discovered that the nave of the cathedral had been destroyed several hundred years after its completion by a tornado 335 years ago to the day. We also found out that the rubble had been left there for over 150 years before it was cleaned up!

Here are some images of the view from the top of the tower, after climbing the 465 steps, mostly in the form of a spiral stairwell. However, unlike the previous instances of this particular style of ascention enabler that we have encountered thus far, there was no need to squeeze past anybody. This was primarily due to the fact that everyone in the tower was part of the tour group, so we were all going in the same direction at the same time.

Also part of the tour was the area where the bells of the carillon are kept.

The church that used to be attached to the tower

The City of Utrecht. Leela's house is somewhere in the top 5th of this picture, next to the canal.

The bells of the carillon.

After lunch, we went to Amsterdam to board our night train to Munich. We took a tour of the canals of that city and saw, amongst other things, a giant cruise ship just leaving port, and several floats (oh, there was pun intended) in the Gay Pride parade that happened to be on the Amsterdam waterways today.

Day 18: A different mode of transport

After a rather leisurely start to the morning, we walked into town to hire a couple of bicycles for the day. We then went out for a ride. We basically rode alongside the canal until we stopped for lunch, and then looped back and rejoined the canal on the way back to Leela's place. We were out for the best part of 6 hours, and by the time we got home, we were glad we didn't have to do any more cycling. At least it beat walking for 6 hours - gave some different muscles a work out.

Leela's flatmate has a parrot (actually, she's just looking after it for someone else). It's large and green and, fortunately, not pining for the fjords. It likes to eat banana.

True story.

Some pictures:

A castle in just outside of Utrecht. According to our tour guide (Leela), the family who owned it knocked down most of the defensive structure and replaced it with comfortable rooms. In every conflict since then they've had to bribe all sides to not attack their place.

A boat passing under a raised roadbridge.

Waiting for boats to pass so that the bridge can be lowered and we can be on our way. The chap in blue jeans and white shirt just to the left of the bridge is holding a pole with a string on the end (click on the picture for a large version). At the other end of the string is a clog, into which the passing boaters would put money.

Day 17: LOX Fun Times in Utrecht, or Amsterdam Shmamsterdam

We took the train from Paris to Amsterdam. The most exciting thing to happen was that two American tourists fell foul of the rail system, and tried to get on using just their Eurail passes. Unfortunately for them, this particular train required reservations (or something) and they'd have to pay some large number (I can't remember the figure) of Euros. This didn't actually come to light until we were well under way and the ticket collectors came around, by which time it was too late to just get off the train. Their other option, and what they ended up doing, was to only pay 96 Euros each and get off at the first stop (Brussels).

We were met at the station in Amsterdam by Leela (who you may remember from Edinburgh) which was a pleasant surprise - we were planning to have to make our way to Utrecht ourselves and meet up with her there. After dumping our stuff at Leela's place, we went for a wander around downtown Utrecht, which was lovely. The largest building in the city (by law, apparently) is the Dom tower. It is across the road from a church. It used to be part of the church, but the folks that built the place concentrated on the tower and the church-y bit, but ran out of money when it came to the bits in between, so it was built poorly, so it collapsed. In the end they just put a road through it.

Good times.