Just like haarlem, utrecht is quite nicer than its NY counterparts

So yeah marieke is Canadian actually, and so is anthony, but they are now working in the Netherlands, marieke in delft as a type of consultant (not sure if this is the right word) for companies that go to her and ask which way is more economical and better for the environment, to use say, glass bottles for their product, or plastic. So she calculates the pros and cons for each case. Like as an example, glass weighs more than plastic so to put coke in all these glass bottles and then to drive the bottles to the warehouse would cost more in fuel cause it weighs down the truck more. So I thought that was a very awesome job! And Anthony works with wind energy with the turbines. But I think marieke went on exchange to like Denmark or something but I forgot her reason for wanting to live in the Netherlands lol. After some time Anthony came home (he was helping his friend to build a canoe..or a kayak) but I went to bed pretty soon after (and ate the last 2 stroop waffles. They didn't even last a day!)
Wed Feb 8: I had been kind of cold that night since I put the smaller blankets on top of the duvet one so didn't sleep the greatest. When I woke up marieke and Anthony had both left for work so I just ate some food and left to explore utrecht. I walked to the center which wasnt far but was taking a lot longer than if I had gone by bike. I did notice the crossing sign at the street was instead of the usual green and red man, it was a sporty girl jogging lol. I thought that was cute. So My first stop was (of course) the tourist info where I got a map. The girl said they had no self guided walking tours in English though. So I went to this museum specifically for catholic art in an old convent. You get an audio tour thru the museum which wasn't for all of the items, but most. And they also had a book explaining what some exceptional pieces were, and it translated the intros to each section, cause otherwise it wasnt in English (so still a large portion wasn't in English but I spent enough time in there to make it work my admission price:free!) The oldest were sculptures from the 13th century, in particular was this massive wood carving of st Christopher with baby Jesus on his shoulders. And they had triptychs From churches and lots of paintings and bishops jewelry, relics and stuff from church treasuries and all this. The treasury items were actually in a small room and some were really decorated with gold and jewels and finely carved. The doorway was arched and had a sign that said "please watch your head" but I thought the top was miles away!! My lonely planet said that the new requirement for doorway heights is 5'11"! But ok anyway in the treasury they had some protestant stuff for the mass and it was just plain pewter dishes and cups and it explained that protestants think that worshipping god should be with simple items, and all the flash jewels is just greed on the catholic churches part. But the catholics think that god deserves the best!! I agree with the protestants, I think this wonderful and powerful god of theirs will still love them without all the ornamentation, and they are doing the earth a favor by not encouraging excavations for these precious jewels! So the museum They had a small section of contemporary religious art, thank god. One of the temp exhibits was real cute, it was mainly for kids, but it was all about catholic festivals and holidays (these dutch love to have museum exhibits about partying!) it looked real cool but very barely in English :-( I did find out about world pets day in like April or something, and well most of the other holidays I could deduce what they were (the Easter bunny for Easter and the sintaklass for Dec 5) but knowing about the origin of these traditions would have been nice. Another temp exhibit they had was about pilgrimages. They had small sections on pilgrimages in Muslim and Hindi and some Asian cultures but the main theme of the exhibit was to Santiago. This had a book which had everything translated so I went thru the whole exhibit and it actually was more interesting than I thought it was going to be lol. They had old photos of Bethlehem and some other places related to Jesus's birth and life. So it kept talking about st James the greater (I had to Wikipedia "pilgrim" to get his name and I just found out that Santiago is st James in Spanish. It all makes sense now!)  and it showed so many paintings of him in pilgrim clothes and it talked about the hard ships of the pilgrims how they could only eat when accepted offerings and they went to all these important churches around the world to pay their respects. Then I thought, wait a tick, I'm pretty much a pilgrim! I'm not walking or roughing it like they did, but still, only eating food from my hosts, and going to all these churches in every place I visit!! But yeah I went thru the whole exhibit and then I was done with the museum. So at 4pm the dom tower (the highest in the Netherlands) was doing a guided tour up to the top (you can't go up otherwise) so I went at 3:45 pm but the lady at the counter said they need a minimum of 5 people and so far there were only 3 so I waited around and then came across a self guided walking tour in english (so the other girl just didn't have a clue about how to do her job) so I bought that for €2. When 4 came the lady said the tour wasn't going to go ahead :-( so I left and then went to the aboriginal art museum, which is the biggest in Europe (I think!) And that's all folks for the night!!