Kasteel de Haar / Utrecht

After a full day at de Efteling, a hotel in the nearby town of Kaatsheuvel offered a quiet, restful night before traveling onward. It was a half day filled with various transfers, starting with a bus that slowly made its way toward ‘s Hertogenbosch to catch a train to Utrecht. After dropping bags at the hotel, it was back on a train toward Vleuten and finally a small bus that goes back and forth between the train station and Kasteel (Castle) de Haar. If that sounds like a lot to start the day with, it was, but by early afternoon a first glance at the castle had nullified any potential regrets about the schedule.

Just to place it all on a map, especially in relation to the route from Bruges through Ghent and Breda

While waiting at the bus stop in Kaatsheuvel

The view down the street is fairly representative of the quaint, well-ordered small towns that the bus passed through over the next hour.

Kasteel de Haar

While the name traces back to ownership by the de Haar family, the death of an heirless proprietor landed the estate in the hands of the van Zuylens in the 1400s. Most everything from the prior centuries was burned down in the 1480s, and a new structure was erected sometime in the decades that followed, only to fall into ruins from the 1640s onward. Fast-forwarding to 1887, one of the van Zuylen descendants married Baroness Hélène de Rothschild. Her family’s wealth paid for twenty years of construction (1892-1912) to build a 200-room mansion complete with electricity and central steam-heating.

By the late 1990s, the old foundation was failing, and it was estimated that $25 million was needed to save the structure. The daunting bill led to the sale of the castle to a foundation that would preserve it in 2000. The restoration wasn’t even completed until 2011, so being able to see it in its current, pristine state is a privilege only recently granted to the general public.

There’s more interesting history behind this place, even if it’s a modern castle, but it’s all available online for anyone who wants to dive deeper. For everyone else, it’s a truly lovely property from the outdoor spaces to the massive kitchen, so on to photos!

This was the baroness’ room, complete with a rare en suite bathroom. Her husband apparently considered the room to be an eyesore and he attempted to keep others from seeing it. It was decorated with cheap, factory sourced products in more of a French style that clashed with the rest of the building and local preferences.

It seems an inescapable reality that there’s always a gift shop at the end of a tour route.

While walking in the large outdoor space that surrounds the castle, there were signs for Hertenweide (Deer Meadow) and Hertenkamp (Deer Camp). It was taken to be somewhat figurative or historical, with as much expectation to see deer as one would have to see bears wandering around Big Bear. Instead, here are more pictures of deer than you probably want to see.

It was almost Halloween, and though it’s not too common to dress up in the Netherlands, a kid had a witch’s hat that she accidentally dropped over a fence. The deer was very confused and intrigued.

Utrecht

As surprisingly lively as Breda was, Utrecht felt like a ghost town. It made sense for it to be a bit slower late on Sunday, but being out and about on a Monday from 7 until midday was a strange experience. The streets were all but abandoned until after 10. Expectations were much higher based on photos and praise from others about the city, but it seems that a couple of serene viewpoints are the main offering for tourists. It wasn’t even clear that the city offers much to locals unless they want a very relaxed, quiet lifestyle. That’s likely a position borne out of ignorance, and a local guide certainly would have helped. Still, it was orders of magnitude easier to find something interesting everywhere else. Utrecht just felt like a convenient place to sleep when visiting Kasteel de Haar instead of being a destination in its own right.

It’s a strange feeling to walk through a mall to your hotel, but this was just down the hall from it.

The view back toward the train station at night. The building on the right is filled with restaurants.

“Kibbeling” (fried fish pieces) at one of said restaurants

This unmanned machine was polishing the floors early in the morning. It was determined to kill anyone heading out early to do laundry.

The Dom Tower is a centerpiece of Utrecht, though the word “Dom” seems to sometimes have a double-meaning.

Coffee sounded good while getting laundry done. At least the laundromat opened at 7. The places that would serve coffee mostly weren’t open until 10. “Anyday Coffee” was notably not named “AnyTIME Coffee.” Hours weren’t even posted. Fun fact: the Dutch make the top-5 list for per capita coffee consumption. Apparently they just drink it at home or from a coffee station at work.

The Dom Tower, disappearing into the fog, and covered with scaffolding for a multi-year restoration project.

A bakery was open and had these nougat-filled treats with an image of the Dom Tower as a decoration.

Pecan cookies, with another nougat-like substance sandwiched between

Giving oliebollen a second chance. They won’t get a third. They’re too heavy and greasy compared to other donuts.

After wandering the city to try finding whatever this was that popped up over the horizon, it turned out to be an old water tower with nothing but boxes of junk visible through the ground-floor windows.

Off to Amsterdam

After leaving Utrecht, Amsterdam was the last stop for three nights. The next two posts will cover the city and a couple of half-day trips. A bit of writing fatigue seems to be mirroring the travel fatigue of day 29 on the way out of Utrecht. Hopefully there are still a few people reading and enjoying this instead of everyone’s patience for such a long blog series being similarly exhausted.