Our first day trip from the Netherlands on this trip and that excited me. As much as I do love Amsterdam, I was also really enjoying the nomadic unplanned days in our car prior to our arrival here. A “where to next” approach that had me with car keys in hand and Ash frequenting Airbnb and Booking.com more than instagram or other socials. We walked over to Weesperzijde to get the car from its parking bay and waited for Jonts and Cait to arrive.
The plan for the day was to first visit the Kasteel de Haar and then visit the city of Utrecht for lunch. The drive south to the Castle was only about 30km and took us bang on 30 minutes. It’s actually within minutes of leaving Amsterdam vía the Johan Cruijff Arena that you start seeing green fields on both sides of the A2 and the farming countryside swallows you in. Upon arrival at the Castle grounds we parked outside and made our way into the Coach House for a quick coffee prior to our 11:00 tour slot. Again, much like the Gravensteen, it was an unguided tour but here, there were gentlemen stationed in each of the rooms who could answer any questions you had or blurt out a quick history lesson if they so pleased. There were also A3 sized information cards in each room (in multiple languages) which you could pick up and read while you peered around.
Although this 19th century castle is the largest in the Netherlands with its medieval style and multiple stories comprising 200 rooms and 30 bathrooms (as well as a full moat surrounding it), it’s dwarfed by the size of the exterior grounds. Surrounding the castle is a park which was originally constructed with 7000 grown trees that were ordered in by the designer. There is a maze in the garden and a deer park with some really tame deer in it but we will get back to this a little later on.
The interior of this castle is decorated with richly ornamented woodcarving, reminiscent of the interior of Roman Catholic Churches. There are also limestone carvings, many works from the Rothschild collections as well as incredible porcelain from Japan. Wherever you look you see intricate detail and hand-made decorations and carving that would have taken hours and hours to construct. It’s very “un-Dutch”. I see the Dutch are modest, yet affluent, but still very frugal in their demeanour. This castle is opulence, excess and gluttony throughout. It was once the private residence of the Van Zuylen family, whose descendants still stay here yearly. In the last century it has also hosted international jet setters such as Coco Chanel and Roger Moore.
We walked around visiting the ball room, dining room already laid for 34 guests, the study, mens game room, ladies dressing rooms, maids chambers, the office where all castle admin was done, 8 of the incredible guest rooms, the scullery and finally one of the most beautiful kitchens I’ve ever seen. In 1898 this ultramodern kitchen was installed by Paris kitchen manufacturer Atelier Briffaut. The grates in the floor around the coal fired cooking furnace served to provide air for the two coal fires. The smoke was funnelled Agar through underground ducts to the chimney against the north wall, behind the fireplace where the rotisseries turned around.
My highlight of the trip was reading about “a day in the kitchen”. The pâtissier and one of the commis started on breakfast at 05:00. They baked croissants and bread, made scrambled eggs and various kinds of porridge. Their shift ended at 11:00. A hot lunch was served at exactly 13:00 (the Baron was very strict in this regard). The children ate at 12:30. At 16:00 it was time for afternoon tea and cakes, biscuits and savoury sandwiches. Finger-food was served with an aperitif in the Great Hall, and at 21:00, dinner was served. Dinner always included at least four courses and then everything still needed to be cleaned afterwards. I wouldn’t have minded receiving an invite to one of their September soirées.
Afterwards we walked the grounds and attempted the maze. Cait and Ash did it with relative ease but Jonty and I looked a little silly – firstly trying to find the centre endpoint but then more so attempting to find the exit again. Directionally clueless I tell you. We then visited the deer park and one of the deer, rather oddly, took a liking to a head scratch from Jonty. In order to not let this weirdness go on any longer we told Jonty we needed to go have lunch in the city and quickly scurried along to the car.
After a short drive into Utrecht we parked at Hoog Catharijne (underneath a mall) and walked over to find lunch in the oudegracht. We sat against the window at PK Bar & Kitchen and ordered some food. For starters we shared traditional Dutch bitterballen and chicken nachos. For mains Jonts and I went for the beef burgers while Cait had the cheese and ham toastie and Ash had the same as Cait except for the inclusion of a tomato soup. Cait had to exit early as she was catching a train back to AMS for a doctors appointment while the rest of us walked the old town a bit and browsed a few of the shops. Although a lot of the shops are great, they are all in AMS anyway and knowing that, we didn’t stay long.
After the short half hour drive back we found ourselves deep in another game of CATAN. It’s amazing how much more you know the second time around. We had a really competitive battle over about 90 minutes before I managed to sneak a victory. Beginners luck. Not wanting to have another late night (and also to avoid a rematch haha) we said cheers and walked back to De Pijp. We went via the Albert Heijn (supermarket chain) and picked up some salad ingredients. Ash and I whipped up some much needed freshness, settled into some Wednesday on Netflix, and then hit the sack.
KEEP RIGHT PASS LEFT 