Day 9 Utrecht; June 24, 2008

What a glorious day! Blue sky and a breeze and an old city to explore is my idea of a great time!







Our hotel is a hundred year old building right in the center of the old town, directly across from the very oldest church. It started as a monastery over a thousand years ago.


First order of business was figure out how to get to the place where Shelley's conference is. I went with her just to see, so I can go on my own later. It's a number of bus stops away, at a huge modern university complex. The building with the conference is ultra-modern fabulous architecture with curved walls and ramps up instead of stairs.

This conference is way cool for her to be a keynote speaker. She will present in a big auditorium at 1:30 Wednesday, which is in 2 hours but is 3:30 A.M. your time!

Shel wanted to take a couple of hours just to sight-see, so we came back and wandered the town. Then she returned to the conference and locked herself into her friend's office to work on an article they will joint publish. We set up a meeting time for 6:00, which gave her 4 hours to work.
Meanwhile, I entertained myself walking around the old town. It has quaint canals and tall skinny buildings right out of the 1600's right next to modern steel and glass structure. The streets and canals are lined with chestnut and sycamore and linden trees. The fragrance of the lindens is in the air and it's lovely!

Bicycles are the main mode of transport. Everyone rides them; businessmen with briefcases, old ladies with their shopping baskets, students wearing i-pods. There are literally tousands of them everywhere! There is a two-tier sidewalk system. The outer area is for pedestrians, the next sidewalk is for bicycles, and then there's the street. Look very carefully before crossing, because you'll get mowed down by another silent bicycle!

I have a new favorite building. It's this library I'm in right now, typing away to you on the internet. On the street level there are the usual shops, but there is a door with a small sign that says "Ütrecht bibliotek" and a door that leads into the innards of the building. Upstairs, the building is huge and several stories. It's a modern library with a central atrium on the top 3 floors of a small city block. A cute little pregnant lady showed me how to buy a voucher from the machine to get a code to get on the internet. Internet is only €2 and hour here, but at the hotel it's €10. There is even a snack area up here. It's kind of like being at Barnes and Noble, but with really modern architecture in an old building!

Got to go, my time will run out in one minute!