Alpine Summer

My alarm chose to actually work today, so I woke up about 20 minutes before we were scheduled to arrive in Utrecht. We were anticipating making up some of the time from the train being late overnight, and we did; we were only 5 minutes late pulling into the station.

At first, Utrecht's train station looked like many others. It was outdoors, but it was completely covered from the weather. There were many platforms in a row, and stairs and escalators leading up. Noting a sign that promised an exit, we headed up an escalator and into a huge indoor train station. Immediately, we saw one of those boards with the schedule that flips periodically that I'd only, thus far, seen in movies. Also, about twenty stores were instantly visible, along with a Burger King and other food-type places.

We tried to track down a place to buy a map, but mostly only found travel guides for other cities. Knowing, however, that the hotel promised a "5-minute walk from Utrecht Centraal" and its street address, we opted to head outside and look around.

Exiting Utrecht Centraal is an entirely different story. Following the sign, we appeared to be within a mall. We decided to turn around and try another direction; this only led to more / another mall. Finally, we go through the bus depot to get outside and find a city map nearly instantly. Trying to locate ourselves by the position of the river, the overpass at the train station, and what was labelled as the "Vredenberg Viaduct", we saw that we were, indeed, not far from the hotel's location. Through the Viaduct and we'd be on the street, technically. The streets, at least in city centre, change names every block, and we were only one block from Vredenberg Ave.

We head off, knowing it'll only be moments before this confusion is over and we're checking into the hotel. On the map, I noticed a large and rather confusing intersection, and I specifically noted mentally what to do when we encountered it. Following this advice upon encountering a large and rather confusing intersection, I was sure the hotel could literally be only feet away. No such luck. However, large flags were flying with the words "HOTEL CITY CENTRE" emblazoned across them. And we were, indeed, looking for the Hotel City Centre.

Luke thought we had taken the wrong turn at the large and rather confusing intersection, so he found us a huge parking lot to cross backwards to where he thought we should be. I follow his lead, and we find ourselves at HOOG CATHERIJNE. Neither of us knows what it is, but we note its gigantic size and figure we might could find a map / someone to help within its walls. We enter, and fairly quickly realize that we are back in the train station on one of its far ends. However, we do find a map. I also see a free information machine and find a map with a line drawn from the train station to the hotel. Armed with these two pieces of information, we head out again. We try a different route, and end up in a residential area. Turning around, we find ourselves in the same place with the flags, and think, "Perhaps we just didn't go far enough," so we walk a little further.

Eventually, we reach a river. Which we were not supposed to cross on the way to the hotel. We sit down, each with a map, and try to figure out where we might be on the maps if not where we thought we were. No luck. We trade maps. I eventually find us, way on the other side of the train station. Lucky for us, there are two rivers, one on both the east and the west side. And two viaducts, one north, one south of the train station. And the Hoog Catherijne apparently encompasses the entire train station, and the label we found for it on the map was on the other side. We turn around, head back into the big HC. Before we exit, I note that we have now been in and around HC for the past 4 hours. Just outside, we instantly find streets recognizable on the map, and within minutes find our hotel.

We crash for a while in the comfort of not wondering were we are. A little while later, we decided to check out the town, or at least our few streets of it here. We were hoping to go to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam this afternoon, but Luke didn't mention it to me until we were leaving the Schwä and he didn't bother to look up how to get there from the train station, either. So, I suggest that we look up the information on the computer in the hotel (( biting the bullet and paying for internet )), go Sunday morning as soon as it opens, and take an ICE from Amsterdam to go back home. I'm sure this plan sounds familiar, as if it worked out perfectly in Dublin, right? Fingers are crossed.

As I begin to unpack my bag, I notice that my cell phone is not in it. This was the first weekend trip I had actually remembered to bring it -- for emergencies. I put it in my green bag and had made sure it wouldn't be able to just fall out. Everything else of value was in my purse, where I could have easy access. This included things like my Eurail, my passport, my camera, etc. I didn't anticipate needing my phone, so I tucked it into the other bag. On the train, my purse got stowed away somewhere safe, but there was not enough room for everyone's luggage in the compartment, so some bags had to be on the floor, in between bunks.

We also found out that there's not much to do in Utrecht. Which means relaxation weekend. There was an outdoor flea market in front of the hotel in this big empty square, but it was closed down and the square completely emptied by the time we headed out of the hotel. We walked through a few streets and stopped for dinner. I had a falafel for the first time, and it was delicious. Then we went back to the hotel to check out some Dutch television . . . and found that it wasn't as entertaining as German tv, except that we could understand it. Most of the channels were in English. CNN, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and some channels that played old American movies subtitled. One of the most interesting things was Mythbusters, one of my favourite shows from home. The people in the show were the same, but there was a different narrator, a British guy that converted all the pounds to kilos and feet to meters for his audience.