Utrecht

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Yesterday Dad, Harry, Sam and I went to Utrecht.

Once off the train we went to the information desk. There the man suggested we go to the train museum. After a bus, getting lost and a long walk we finally got there. Once we were there we found out that all the museums were gesloten* on Mondays!

Next we decided to walk to the centre of town. There we found the 'Dom' which is a large tower. After we saw that we looked around and saw a big building and we wondered what it was. We went inside and we found the answer. Apparently the Dom and the building used to be joined together to form a church. What happened was that a hurricane swept threw the middle of the church and that part was destroyed. Now they have built a square in the middle and planted some trees.

Probably the most amazing thing was the lack of cars. All the streets were cobbled, there were very few cars, or bikes (for the Netherlands) and everyone was walking.

While walking around we came across these canals below street level with stairs leading to them. We were amazed to see what looked like houses. Eventually we discovered that not many of them were inhabited and the ones that were, were joined to the ones across the road and were usually office buildings or restaurants. Finally we discovered that they were remnants of the historic Utrecht wharves.

We had a great day.

By Tom
*Gesloten - closed

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