This weekend we decided to see something of Holland other than Amsterdam, so we visited the nearby city of Utrecht. It's about 40km south-east of Amsterdam and only takes 25 minutes on the intercity tram, which is quite a comfortable, clean public transport service.
Utrecht looks similar to Amsterdam in many ways with the canals running between lines of 4 level brick buildings with similar facades and gables. The city centre was of course much smaller and felt less polished when compared to Amsterdam, which could be seen as a good or a bad thing. As we walked along the Oudergracht, we noticed a unique feature of Utrecht's canals which was the lower level along the edge of the water below street level.
We visited most of the major tourist attractions in the city centre, including the Domkerk and Domtoren (Dom church and tower), which have a rich history as the centre point of this ancient town. Records show that the current location of the church was the original founding of the Roman settlement in around 70AD, and the church has gone through many changes over 2000 years including being burnt down, being converted to Protestantism during the reformation, being converted back to Catholicism during French occupation and being torn in half by a tornado in the 1600s which is responsible for the current church being in 2 separate parts (the church and the spire).
We also visited the Utrecht Centraal Museum which had a lot of art from the Dutch old master painters. There was also a fairly large contemporary section that was very abstract and to someone like me, not even recognisable as art (such as a broken drumkit, or some pants hanging from the ceiling).
Attached to the Centraal Museum was the Dick Bruna House, where there were lots of Miffy memorabilia and information about Bruna's other projects. On the way back to the train we spotted this set of traffic lights which had the pedestrian symbols replaced with little Miffy signs.
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