Utrecht

With the mini soccer field (or rather
 football pitch...) at Madurodam

Sorry I haven't posted in almost a month! This past month has been quite busy. I went to Madurodam in the Hague which is all of the Netherlands famous sites in miniature. It was really cool! I also went to some more museums. At the Haags Historische Museum they had a preserved finger and tongue from some brothers who had been executed! For the gory details surrounding their execution see here.



This past Saturday I went to Utrecht with two other au pairs. It was a really nice city! We went up into the Dom Tower which is the tallest church tower in the Netherlands. It was a bit foggy that day so you couldn't see that far but it was nice to see the city from up above! It's 465 steps to the top so it was quite a trek! And if you know how the Dutch build their stairs, you'll understand the difficulty even more (very steep and narrow).  The tower was completed in 1382 and was originally attached to the church. However, in 1674 a storm damaged part of the church and they never rebuilt it so now the church and tower stand apart.

The Dom Tower

View from the top

Next up was Slot Zuylen, a castle dating to the 16th century that lies just outside of Utrecht. It used to be completely surrounded by water with a drawbridge so invaders couldn't enter. When it was converted to a country manor in the 18th century they filled in part of the moat so that now there's only water on three sides. We took a tour of the castle and learned about its history and some of its former occupants. It was really interesting to see all the rooms. One room that stood out to me had a highly decorative tapestry on all four walls. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the castle so here's a link to see one of the walls. Something else interesting is that there are "secret" staircases and doors that the servants would use so that the people living there wouldn't have to see them walking around.

From this angle it looked like it was just floating on the water

Tomorrow I'm leaving to go on a 5 day trip to Switzerland and Belgium (where I get to see my grandpa for a day!) so I'm sure I'll have plenty to write about when I come back next week!