with Uncle Perry - Blogabond

We arrived with uncle Perry on Friday morning and came by train from Aunty Theresa's house. Once we arrived we took the car and went to Utrecht for some lunch(we had Krotten or crouqhettes mmmm my favorite) and climbed the huge dome of the church. This church is the tallest church in the Netherlands and reached something like 112 meters 95 of which we climbed. It was really interesting to see the bell fry and see how the bells work. This church had two sets of bells the first set was a set of 14 bells that take a large number of people to work them, i believe these bells only ring for special occasions such as new years, christmas and special dutch holidays. The second set of bells are for the carillon and there are about 50 (according to wikipedia) these bells are hooked up to various pullys to play music and twice a week a 70 year old man climbs all the stairs to play songs. From the top of the tower we could pretty much see all of the Netherlands, we saw Amsterdam, Rotterdam, DenHaag and even some windturbines all the way near Spakenburg it was beautiful.

We walked around Utrecht for a while before heading to a little community near Amersfoot to see a type of experiment relating to house styles, it was nice to see many differnt styles of houses in one community instead of the cookie cutter styles you typically see at home and in Europe, especially in Europe houses are often under strict regulations to look a certain way in a certain country for example a house in Austria has to look Austrian.

After some driving we headed back to the house and had dinner which coincidently happened to be my favorite dutch meal (i didn't even ask for it) Potatoes mixed with endive and bacon and meatballs. I just realized that i have never talked so much about the food we have eaten until we got to Holland I guess it is so nice to eat some familiar things and home cooked meals.

On saturday we went to the market in Spakenburg where we also got to see some old oak wood ships and then went to a steam mill where we got to see how they get the water off the farmland and into the lake, it was really interesting. After lunch we did some more driving and went to Harderwyk to see the old town and did some leisurly shopping. My uncle took us to see his new house which he is renovating before he moves in in July, it was a really nice old house with a huge garden and lots of windows. Then we headed back for some coffee, relaxed until dinner and after dinner watched a movie. It is so nice to relax and do normal things and eat normal things that we would at home.

Sunday was a good day too we got up and went for a walk to see where an underground hideout once was for some people during the war, we then went for coffee and pie and then headed to an old concentration camp, it was interesting to see how the camp was different from the one we went to in Germany, they had some nice memorials there.

After lunch my Uncle John and Aunt Harma came to visit until dinner. It was so nice to see all my family and we got to hear about their trip they were just returning from in southern France. After dinner we relaxed and went for a walk before packing our bags to head for Amsterdam.

written by

Trevor and Amber on June 19, 2009 from Ermelo, Netherlands

from the travel blog: Europe Trip

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