A day in Utrecht –

We had an extra day after arriving to explore Utrecht.  The historic district happened to be more or less directly behind the mall where the hotel was located.  We were awake early and after a typical hotel breakfast, we took a walk. 

This trip had come together so fast that I hadn’t really done any advance planning for what to see in Utrecht.  I did know that the old church tower was a point of interest, so we simply looked up and eventually spotted it off in the distance and began wandering in that general direction.

This tower is the tallest church tower in the Netherlands.  It was once connected to St. Martin’s Cathedral.  They started to build the cathedral in 1321, but stopped in 1382 when they ran out of money for it.  In 1674, the unfinished nave collapsed due to a tornado-like storm.  The nave originally connected the tower to the main part of the church.  Once they cleared out the storm debris, they didn’t build a new nave, so the tower and the church are separated by a courtyard now.  The location of the tower is also on the exact spot where the town of Utrecht was founded almost 2,000 years ago.

There is a pass-through under the tower and the church is not far from the tower.

This interesting house was directly next to the tower pass-through..

We were out early enough that nothing was open yet, so we wandered and looked at buildings and the canals, which are charming.  We stopped on a bridge to look at a canal view and noticed a man peacefully paddling a canoe toward us.  I didn’t get a picture of him, but as he reached the bridge, we noticed that the canoe was a Winona Canoe -made in Minnesota.  Winona was a big sponsor for the Great River Rumble (and annual canoe/kayak trip on the Mississippi River that we participated in for years), so we thought that was a fun (and unexpected) thing to see in the Netherlands! 

As we were walking down a short road near the church, we saw a restaurant/bar with a familiar name:  Lebowski   It is named after the movie The Big Lebowski.  It was such a coincidence because I rarely watch the entertainment on flights…but I did turn it on for a while on this flight.  The movie I watched (most of) was the Big Lebowski!

Mike wasn’t feeling great, so we ended up going back to the room pretty early in the day.  We hoped that if he got enough rest time before we officially checked in for the bike + boat tour  tomorrow that maybe it would help him get over the cold faster.   At lunchtime I went down to the mall…there was a Jumbo grocery store very close to the hotel.  I found some mystery sandwiches that were OK, but I decided that  the next time we did something like that, we’d just buy the parts and make our own sandwiches.  

The evening, Mike rallied enough for us to go out for our 45th anniversary dinner.  Again, we relied on finding a restaurant inside of the mall.  We ended up splitting a pizza and having carrot cake for dessert.   ‘

After we ate, we went straight back to the room to get a good night’s sleep because the tour was starting the next afternoon.

Categories: Part 1: Netherlands Bike & Barge 2025, Part 2: Utrecht