This one’s for you brett – this is the hallway of the hostel…
Utrecht was a bit of a mecca for me – firstly because it was the home of architect Gerrit Rietveld and the location of his Rietveld Schröder House (among many others).
I joined a tour to visit the House - had to wear strange little plastic showercaps over our shoes (to protect the floor, and to my disgust weren’t allowed to take any pics from the inside BOOOOO!!! (sorry brett) We went through the House room by room with the guide demonstrating its features, including the super-cool moveable walls in the upstairs level that allowed the entire upstairs space to become one big room. For its time, this was totally revolutionary.
I think my favourite bit of the house was the Shopping window, with the ‘speaking tube’ linking outside to the upper level. The milkman could ask Mrs Schroder how many bottles of milk she wanted via the tube, then leave them inside the window (which would automatically close) –so that Mrs Schroder did not have to disturbed to come downstairs… brilliant!
Utrecht was also the home of Dick Bruna, creator of the character Miffy, and we visited the museum (and gift shop) devoted to Bruna and Miffy. I think the museum was meant for kids actually but we had buckets of fun pretending to be 7 years old again!
I was a little scared by the giant golden Miffy…
But the best thing about Utrecht was just wandering around the streets – was sooo pretty. We stumbled upon an opera performance on the bank of a canal, and learnt that there was a festival going on in Utrecht that day! The singers were on the far side of the canal in this pic…
All in all a very cool town... loved it!
x
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