We left Nijmegen a little before noon on the 20th of July, and arrived in Utrecht at about 1:00. We quickly found our hotel, located conveniently near the train station, and decided to walk to the Museum het Catharijneconvent. Utrecht is beautiful and charming, and we greatly prefered it to Nijmegen. There are three canals running through the city center–I am a sucker for canals. They are lined with restaurants and interesting-looking shops. The city center is quite small, so it was a fairly quick walk to the museum, a collection of religious art dating mostly from the middle ages. It was a nice museum with plenty to look at, though only one exhibit had English translations. On the walk back to the museum, we passed the cloister garden of the Domkerk, the city’s gothic cathedral. It was a nice escape from the rain, and we took several photos of the garden and gothic architecture. We stopped to eat at an awesome pita stand near the cathedral before going back to the hotel.
On Monday, since all the museums were closed, we decided to go on a canal cruise and climb the Domtoren, the highest church tower in the Netherlands. We got an early start and not much was open yet, so we went to the Domkerk. The nave of the church was destroyed in a hurricane in 1674, so only the transept and tower are left. Even though only half of the original structure remains, it was still the most impressive gothic building I’ve visited. There were still some original pieces of sculpture in the building, all defaced during the Reformation. We had coffee in the church cafe, which overlooks the cloister garden that we visited on Sunday. We had cappuccino and a little tart with an image of St. Martin, the patron saint of Utrecht, printed on it.
At noon we went to the Domtoren and paid for a tour. Even though it was a rainy day, the view from the tower (112 metres high) was impressive. There are 465 stairs to the top, but it wasn’t a bad climb since there were a few stops along the way. After climbing the tower, we stopped at the pita stand again and then went on a canal cruise. It was a little hard to see out of the boat windows because of the rain, but it was still a nice view of the canals and the city.
there & back again 
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