James Tucker in Cov

Utrecht is the last place I visited on my recent trip to the Netherlands. It's about 45 minutes from Amsterdam by train, and is a smallish university town, though I think bigger than Leiden. The quieter residential area can be seen top left, though a lot of this has been taken over for university departments and the like (they have almost buried the canal there, but you can still boat in it). It has a fairly well-done new shopping area to one side of the old town (old town, right), and seems like a pretty lively place. The old town does really well by the university, with some really great nightlife and local stores. A lot of the restaurants and clubs have extended basements that stretch under the road to the river, so they have patios on mutiple levels- you can sort of see that in the picture above right.
Apparently, Utrecht went to war with Amsterdam a couple of times in the middle ages, and one of Amsterdam's towers today has an inscription mocking their smaller neighbour. Utrecht used to be pretty heavily fortified in the 18th C., and the remains of the city walls are still visible in some of the parks. Like Leiden, Utrecht has a huge, half-built church, though this one was finished before a hurricane (!) knocked part of it down. The part that's been saved has had the open face bricked up (below left). The main tower stands some distance from the Choir, with a square in between that still shows the old church floorplan (there are old gravestones, pillar bases etc- below centre). Like in Amsterdam and Leiden, the carillon, in the main tower, seems to be pretty important, playing a different tune every hour that can be heard anywhere in the old town. From a number of angles (below right) it's actually hard to notice that there's a chunk of the church missing. Except of course that most churches don't have trees growing out their sides.
Also, for some unclear reason, there is a UFO crashed into one of the newer office buildings.

Is what I had to pass on my way to the grocery store today... Birmingham remains classy.

And yes, my route to the grocery store includes industrial canals and an alleyway.

Leiden is like Stratford-Upon-Avon for the Netherlands. It's a scenic town that recalls the country's Golden Age, and it's the birthplace of their best-known artist, Rembrandt. It also has a small University, the oldest in the country, and it's there that the first tulips grown in Holland were planted. The future pilgrims of the Mayflower tested local patience for a spell before being moved on to make the trip to Plymouth. As a result of all of this, Leiden is a pretty well-known and travelled spot, but I found it really quiet and peaceful. That said, the town symbol is a really angry lion. With a sword.
The town is on a few islands in the Rhine/Rijn, with a couple of canals thrown in for good measure. There's a sort of castle (it's a circular wall on top of a really small hill) and a great old church that was one of my favourite buildings I've seen yet(right). The town clearly gave up on building it halfway through, and instead of a great high gothic stone building, they got half of one, and finished the thing off in brick at half the height. The people of Leiden also seem to love their cats, especially their cat-doors. I saw one with a ramp attached so that the cat could get into the second-story apartment.
I only spent an afternoon there, but I think I saw everything that there really is to see- the town has a pre-planned route through it that takes you by everything (except the little fort) in about an hour. One other neat, well-planned thing is that even though it's a smallish place, there is a huge bike parking lot (right) near the train station.

I spent only a few hours in the Hague, but from everything I saw, it is one of the quietest 'capitals' in Europe. Technically, it's only the Seat of Government, but as far as I can see, Amsterdam's being the capital means absolutely nothing. There are some nice streets of small embassies, an out-of-the-way business district, a modest downtown palace (and apparently a pretty big one on the beach I managed to miss, and the Dutch Parliament. I walked through a small brick gate, and sat down on the steps of what I thought was a church while I tried to work out just where the parliament buildings might be. Of course, I was sitting on the front steps of them, at 10 AM on a weekday (left), and only was there nothing going on, there was no security or police. Forget some massive act of sabatoge, I could have written my name on the doors in chalk and gotten away. Still, it was a nice first taste of the Netherlands, and a contrast with Amsterdam, which was absolutely teeming. At the bottom of this entry is a somewhat more scenic picture of the Hague. And a picture of a herring stand.
Amsterdam seems to be mainly four squares and a number of concentric canals. As such it's hard to feel as if you're ever at the centre of it, even when you are. It's nice enough, but the tourism and sheer press of the place sometimes made it a little hard to take, especially in contrast with the small towns a half-hour train ride away. As you might expect from a city built on mud, almost none of the buildings are strong on right angles (right) Gareth and I rented bikes there, and boy is it nice to ride them. The special lanes are a bit above the road, and a bit below the sidewalk, and you essentially have the right of way over anyone- pedestrian or car. As the whole country is also very flat, it makes cycling a bit of a dream- you don't really have to think about it. Everyone in the Netherlands biked, too. Men in business suits, students headed to convocation, parents with their children hanging off the back. And though noone really had flashy bikes, and though there were more bikes than people, theft is apparently an issue, because everyone was scrupulous about locking their bikes to every possible surface. Often twice.

Versailles is exactly as spectacular as you assume it would be, except for the construction going on in the front yard. And in the Hall of Mirrors (top- if you look closely, you'll see that it's been divided in half by a mirror so they can do construction. It's actually hard to notice until you walk into the wall). Really, the whole place is just dripping with wealth; a sort of physical justification of the French Revolution.
The best part, though, is probably the gardens, which are full of fountains and lakes. At least half the fountains have sculptures sitting in them, usually of the scary variety, like the frog-men spitting water, or that really angry fish.
Oh, and also in the gardens are two smaller palaces (about the size of a high school each) built on the site of a former peasant village. These summer retreats are at least a 20 minute walk from the main building, presumeably all one needs to get away from it all. And, to add insult to injury, on the site of the village they pulled down Marie Antoinette had a fake village built, so she could play at being in the country. It's pretty much out of a fairy-tale, especially the crumbling plaster and bricks which have been painted on. There are some spectacular newer bits built in the 19th C., including a French Hall of Victory, which stops in 1807. Seriously.