Utrecht; Sunday, 09 August, 2020

I got up relatively early as I had a busy day planned visiting a local castle. After a quick breakfast I checked out, left my bags with the hotel, and headed over to the station. I picked up the local train a couple of stops out to the small town of Vleuten and changed there onto the bus to the even smaller village of Haarzuilens, home to the impressive Kasteel de Haar.

As to be expected with an ancient castle, it’s not actually anywhere near public transport and it was a good 20-minute walk in already hot sun over to the entrance to the castle.

The castle was originally built in the middle ages and eventually fell into ruin before being rebuilt in the 19th century and turned into the template castle complete with towers, crenulations, moats, battlements, and a chunky portcullis. The family that owned the castle eventually passed it over to the Dutch state, but can still make use of it from time to time to host their famous parties that originally had the key political figures of the day attending, but by the 1960s were more a who’s who of celebrities.

You can wander around most of the main castle building – though at the time of visiting there was a well laid out Covid-secure walking route to follow and limits on the numbers of people who could come into each room. I spent a good hour or so wandering around the many rooms of the main building – which gives you an idea of the size of the castle.

After looking round the castle I headed out into the grounds, and took in the impressive maze – eventually finding both my way to the middle and the way back out again! I then followed one of the recommended walking routes round the extensive grounds to take in the best views of the castle gardens and lakes. I eventually made it back to the main entrance a couple of hours after first arriving, and only about 30 minutes before the hourly bus back to the station in Vleuten was due to leave the stop, 20 minutes walk away.

I quickly grabbed some lovely cold water from a kiosk near the entrance and made my way back to the village centre and made it to the bus stop with about 5 minutes to spare. As this was the Netherlands, the bus was bang on time and made it back to Vleuten station with enough time to calmly climb the stairs up to the platforms before the local train back to Utrecht came through.

Back in Utrecht I stopped for a late lunch. I only had about 90 minutes before I needed to start my journey home, so I headed back over to the canal and went on the shorter 60 minute canal tour – ending up with the same captain as the previous day, albeit this time with a larger language mix and less additional commentary.

Tour completed I headed back from the centre of town to the hotel, collected my bag and headed over to the station to catch the train back to Schiphol. The airport was still really quiet – so quiet in fact that many parts of it were closed, meaning I had to walk over to Terminal 3 to checkin, but then had to walk back over to Terminal 2 to find an open security lane to get through to departures.

Through in departures it was still really quiet. Around the airport are banks of screens, usually in blocks of six or eight, showing upcoming departures. Normally these are totally full and only display the next couple of hours of flights. Tonight, just three screens listed all the departures for the next 12 hours.

It did mean, though, that there was lots of space around the gate to spread out and wait for our flight back to London to be called.