A trip to the Railway Museum in Utrecht

 Friday, 31 July 2015

Today the sun is shining again when we get up and it looks like it's going to be a glorious day, so we plan to go out.  Partricia likes trains and railways, therefore we go to the Railway Museum in Utrecht, not far from here.

Getting there is a bit of a problem, as there's roadworks on the way to the museum and my GPS insists on sending me the wrong way, even after I have tried to get it to make a detour.  Close to the roadblock a friendly council worker asks me where I want to go.  I am quite distracted and a bit flustered, because I can't find my way, so I start answering her in very good English!!! She's not at all worried about it and responds in English too! Haha... At least it's clear now after her explanation.  She stops the traffic, allows me to make a U-turn and on our way we go again, following all the M-signs until we reach the museum parking lot.

The museum itself is a real surprise.  Not at all like a regular boring museum with railway stock littering a huge space, but dotted with various interesting and funny rides and such.

We enter the huge hall of the former railway station of Utrecht and from there walk to the different areas of interest.  The first one brings us to an old mining town in England where the story of steam trains begins and it ends with the first Dutch steam train on display.

At the end a small art gallery with pictures denoting scenes involving trains

The set-up was wonderful and so realistic and not one moment did we feel like we were walking around in a museum.  This was an audio tour and lucky for Patricia it was available in English.

There was a theatre which we enjoyed (or rather I did, because it was all in Dutch of course) and the rolling stock from old to modern trains, of which a few pictures:

We also went to Grand dad's attic, which really was a mild kind of roller coaster ride and later to the Firetest where we had to drive a train in a simulator, which was very realistic with the screen in front of us being the railway line and landscape we were travelling on an through.

There was much more and the museum catered very well for children, which is fantastic.  It was the same at the Muiderslot.  So great that children don't have to follow their parents to boring museums nowadays.  It's fun!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures after these as my phone turned itself off and on again, and... having a temporary Dutch SIM I didn't have my PIN handy, so that was the end of that!

We enjoyed lunch in the sun and after our last round (and a return to the simulator!) we left to go home.  We did our groceries shopping on the way back and bought a treat (ah, the Dutch pastries and cakes are so decadent), because we could. ;-)

After dinner the weather was still fine, so I took out the bike and went for a ride to Kortenhoef.  It was a lovely ride and in Kortenhoef all the houses had their own little bridges, because they were all on the water.  It was a 16 km ride, and a mild sort of evening, so it was a great pleasure to be out and about and enjoy the scenery.