Day Trip to Naarden

When the summer started, Pete and I each made a list of places in the Netherlands that we wanted to visit. Then our days got filled with house hunting, meeting with makelaar, mortgage broker, inspectors, gathering furniture, etc. Apart from our time with Rachel, we were feeling like the summer hadn't really felt like a vacation. So on Sunday when Pete said, "do you want to go to Naarden tomorrow," I enthusiastically agreed. 

Naarden (pictured below- photo cred: http://gotravelaz.com/naarden/#photo_1), is a walled fortress city just 30 minutes from our home. The images of its star fortress shape with moats was reason enough to want to visit. Cool, no?!

We parked along the fortress wall and strolled the streets stopping for lunch on the terrace at Het Hart (The Dear). 

We've nicknamed Maeve "Smush" or "little smushy"- This is why!

We passed the town church (Grote Kerk or Great Church) and were considering passing it up (once you see one protestant Dutch church you start to feel like you've seen them all). I was so glad we went in! You immediately notice the ceiling, which is painted wood panels, something we'd never seen before. As I was admiring them, a man came close behind and started speaking to me in Dutch. He gave me a scare, but was a church historian who went on to tell us a lot of history of the church and the paintings. One side of paintings is the old testament and the other side the new. The panels mirror each other so there are common themes together. The panels were painted in 1510! Each had a sponsor, whose chest is painted at the top of each painting. The church publishes a book explaining each panel and we purchased a copy to study later. A good way to brush up on my biblical history! Like most churches, it started Catholic and changed over to Protestant.

Back outside, we found ice cream and wandered outside of the city center to a lovely tree-lined path that traced the starred moat. It was nice to enjoy the city at a leisurely pace as Jude was at day care, but then we kept seeing things that we knew Jude would have loved- a kinder farm along the path and a number of playgrounds. This will make a great day trip for visitors so we'll have to bring him back another time!

Even though it was on our summer "to-do" list, I was still impressed by Pete's suggestion that we go as he is also one to enjoy downtime at home. After I enthusiastically agreed to go, he then casually mentioned that Naarden happened to be on the way to his home brew store and could we stop there on our way home. True motives discovered :)