Utrecht and Beyond!

On Wednesday this past week we took a field trip to Houten. Houten is a suburb of Utrecht, located in the central part of The Netherlands. The city is known as having the best bicycle infrastructure in the country. A ring road surrounds the city, and all vehicular traffic is directed onto the ring road. To get from one neighborhood in the city to another neighborhood by car you have to get onto the ring road and then get off again. Only bikes and pedestrians are allowed to freely travel inside the ring. It created a really quiet city with children out playing everywhere and people walking.

While the city is probably an urban planers dream come true, I found it kinda creepy. The city seemed too nice. All of the architecture matched and everything was impeccably landscaped. With no cars around either, it looked more like a village in Disney than a real neighborhood.

The main park in Houten

Presentation at City Hall by the City Planner for Houten

A residential street in Houten. The red pavement means that bicycles have priority.

Houten City Center

Once we were done with class for the day around 5:30, we were free to head back to Delft. However, a group of us decided to stop in Utrecht for dinner, since we had to transfer trains there anyways. I had never heard of Utrecht before about a month ago, but it turns out Utrecht is the fourth-largest city in The Netherlands (after Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague). It was really pretty! It reminded me of a smaller, less-touristy version of Amsterdam. Unfortunately we were only there for a few hours on a Wednesday evening, so most stores and attractions were closed. We got dinner at a take-out Greek restaurant and then just walked around the city for a few hours.

Shopping district in Utrecht

Canal side dining. This area actually reminded me of San Antonio, Texas. All of my friends thought it was odd to compare Holland to Texas, but the canal and atmosphere here did seem similar. Although the architecture may be a little nicer in Utrecht.

Utrecht is known for it's multi-level canals. Unlike the other Dutch cities I've visited so far, the canals here have a level right at the canal and then a second level at the street that's about 20 feet above the canals. According to the guidebook I have, the lower level was originally used a warehouse in the 13th Century.

We found a bunch of narrow alleys here that all seemed really cool.

See how narrow the alleys are?!

View of the canals and the cathedral tower. This is one of my favorite photos so far.

The whole group in Utrecht!

This sign is a little hard to read, but it talks about how the path is really old and how the roots of trees have grown within the path.

Another photo of the restaurants along the canal

Some old buildings

A view from the lower level. What a new perspective!

And now the view from above.

Bridge!

Utrecht!

Another view of the cathedral tower. The tower dominate the skyline of old Utrecht.

Who doesn't get excited by old canals?

Even their coke ads are different in Holland!

From the base of the cathedral tower.

And one last photo of Utrecht. Maybe I should take fewer photos?

Thursday and Friday were less exciting days, at least in terms of pretty photos that make my trip look exciting. Thursday we worked on our projects for most of the day. As I mentioned in my previous post, we were working on designing a "bike boulevard" in Dorchester using design techniques that we've learned here in The Netherlands. Friday we spent most of the day presenting the projects to the class. We all got feedback from the professors and our next task is to revise our projects based on the feedback.

Thursday was also the last day of the program for about a quarter of our group. For the last two weeks there had been about 10 students with us from a similar program based out of Portland State University in Oregon. These students had been with us for most of our class days, and Thursday was the last day of their program. Thursday afternoon those students presented projects that they had been working on and in the evening a group of us went out for a drink to say goodbye to them. Personally I'm glad I still have a few more weeks here. There still seems like there is so much to see!