Utrecht University was founded in 1636 and the old parts of the medieval city feature an interesting mix of new and old shops and restaurants on narrow cobblestone streets surrounded by canals ....with lots and lots of bicycles. Downtown under the train station there is a bicycle parking facility that is the world's largest with 13,500 spaces! Nonetheless, we found it to be a great city for walking. The artist who created Miffy was from Utrecht and there is a museum devoted to that (I didn't go).
Chris and I very much enjoyed our time in the Netherlands and I took hundreds of photos. We purchased a Museum Card that granted entrance to an enormous number of cultural sites, which we visited by taking trains, trams, subways, and buses. The mass transit system is terrific and well-integrated though we did have some trouble with train cancellations a couple of times because of ongoing repair work between Amsterdam and Utrecht.
In Amsterdam, which we visited many times by train, we were especially pleased by the Rijksmuseum (which has a lot of Rembrandt -- see above) and the Van Gogh Museum. We also learned a good deal of Dutch history at the Anne Frank House, the Resistance Museum, and the National Maritime Museum (Chris skipped that one to devote more time to Resistance). Dutch warships were fighting major battles before the US was born.
We also traveled to Den Bosch for Karnival in a light rain and enjoyed a sunny Saturday in Rotterdam where we visited the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Rotterdam is Europe's largest port and the city was largely rebuilt after being destroyed by bombs in World War II.
We spent nearly 3 weeks in March in the UK, living in Brighton, the southern coastal town. I'll probably say more about that in a future post. I met with a couple of scholars working at Sussex University and hope that at least one of those meetings leads to productive collaboration sooner or later.
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