Last stop - 36 Hours in Utrecht

Well, 36 hours in Utrcht is better than zero hours in Utrecht. I love it. It's a fairly big city but the historical center is small enough to walk around and enjoy the canals.

Yes, there's another Dutch city with lots of canals. The weather has been perfect. On our whole trip to the Netherlands, everybody seems so happy and out and about sitting in cafes enjoying the sun while they can.

I snagged a room that's a little far from the center but is in a former monastery and that was interesting. The courtyard is absolutely beautiful and the room was really nice. The restaurant was pretty good too.

By this point we've seen so many museums and churches and tourist things that we just kind of walked around and enjoyed the slower pace of Utrecht. We did however see one museum called the Speelklok. It's dedicated to musical instruments that are wind up mechanical devices. That's pretty weird I know, but it was kind of fascinating. They evolved out of watches and clocks. The same people who made these ended up making wind-up musical instruments, player pianos, barrel organs and so much more.

We have a night flight tonight from Amsterdam Schipol airport to Istanbul (wrong direction, I know) and then back West to Chicago. So we had all day to kill walking around the canals and enjoying wine and coffee at cafes.

Once again, it's been a fantastic trip. Train travel in Europe is so easy. I just can't get enough of it. And the Netherlands is a great end to the trip.

We're having a hard time picking our top 3 Dutch cities, but Amsterdam is not even in the running. For me, it might be Haarlem, Maastricht, and Utrecht. But then again, I loved Rotterdam, so I guess I'll have to go back to them all.

More photos and videos are here.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/r5zSEfj2Yh62FbAg7Baca lagi