Utrecht & Luxembourg
Cycling to Utrecht
It was the second week of July and quite a week it had been. To start it off, I was ill. There had been building works in my flat, resulting in drilling from 8 AM every day as well as an inadvertent cutting off of electricity in my bedroom that lasted the whole week. Also, my relationship of five months ended. So when Friday came around, and with it mine and Molly’s planned cycling trip to Utrecht, I could not have been happier about it. Get me the fuck out of Leiden.
Both of us had made a list of things we’d like to do this summer/this year and a long cycling trip was a shared goal. We set off at 8:15 AM, somewhat unprepared but very enthusiastic. We were navigating via Google Maps, with our paired AirPods speaking some very confusing directions into our ears for the next several hours. Within an hour, the heavens began to open. Thankfully, we had purchased waterproof trousers from HEMA the day prior so we were ready to grace the cycleways of the Netherlands with our fashion. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to put anything waterproof on my very much not-waterproof bag and as a result, all of my clothes got totally soaked.
This trip was completed on our normal Swapfiets bikes, with no gears and pretty uncomfortable bike seats. Despite that (and the pouring rain), I started to get an idea of why people liked doing this so much. All that time, zooming along, alone with your thoughts and seeing parts of the countryside you would never normally see. Although I do have to admit that Molly and I came to the realisation that the entire Leiden to Utrecht stretch was essentially one big suburb. To some extent, the whole of the Netherlands is one big suburb. There are supposedly some really big stretches of actual nature in the east of the country but I have yet to see them.
We had planned to stay a night in Utrecht, (correctly) anticipating that we would in fact take longer than expected to cycle there and would really want to relax upon arrival. We chose Stayokay Hostel in Bunnik, which is a 15 minute cycle outside of Utrecht, in the middle of a forest and next to a really cute tea house that serves pancakes. I’d really recommend - it has a great pub on site and a free breakfast.
That night, we ventured out to Utrecht which meant getting back on our bikes (painful) but it was all worth it because we went for a fantastic Indian dinner at Krishna Vilas - extremely delicious with really good South Indian food. The search for a dinner place also gave us the gift of this truly ridiculous Google Maps review (see below). We were too exhausted to do anything really wild so we went to the pub attached to the hostel and polished off a singular beer each before crashing.
The next morning we met up with our friend Sara, an Utrecht local, who gave us a quick tour of some of her favourite spots before we all grabbed a coffee together. The centre of Utrecht is really pretty and nowhere near as touristy as Amsterdam so I’d definitely recommend a day trip. We grabbed Italian sandwiches for lunch from Bigoli, before heading to Sint Willibrordkerk, which is unprepossessing from the outside but has the most incredible interior. Whilst there, as well as hearing two incredible organ performances (one by a particularly gifted tourist), we bumped into two friends we had made in the hostel the previous evening, who we ended up chatting with for ages.
Afterwards we went to what is now one of my favourite bookshops in the world, Boekhandel Bijleveld. Despite its relatively small size and the fact that they stock books in both Dutch and English, they had an incredible selection, with lots of books I had been looking for for ages. Molly left with my recommendation of David Mitchell’s Unruly (a very funny recounting of England’s kings from Arthur to Elizabeth I) and I left with these two:
By that time, we were both rather sleepy and decided to head home - by train this time. Perhaps if it hadn’t been raining on both days we might have been quicker and more enthusiastic cyclists but it’s the Netherlands, so it was raining pretty much the whole time. Despite all the rain and the fact that we were cycling on gear-less Swapfiets bikes, I actually really enjoyed the cycling trip. Maybe I could be tempted into become a long-distance cyclist but I have literally done one long cycle so let’s not speak too soon.
Five Days in the Grand Duchy
As previously mentioned, I was feeling a very strong ‘get me the fuck out of Leiden’ energy in mid July (I am writing this from Leiden and am loving it again so me and the Netherlands are friends once more). My youngest sister was already planning on visiting my uncles in Luxembourg and I crashed the little family reunion. I’ve actually been to Luxembourg many times before but other than one barely remembered trip when I was 5 years old, these visits have always been to the supermarket just over the Belgo-Luxembourgish border (tax is much lower in Luxembourg so shopping there is far cheaper). So essentially, this trip was new terrain for me.
I arrived after a rather lengthy train journey and was immediately whisked away to Luxembourg Pride by my uncles, where we saw Conchita Wurst (!!!) and Gustaph (got 7th place in Eurovision 2 years ago but is Belgian so my uncle is a big fan). It was a very fun but rather strange event as it was hosted in Luxembourg’s second largest city (and I can tell you that is not a very big city) on the weekend where the trains were not working (and public transport in Luxembourg is all free so a lot of people rely on it). So it was a very small crowd (maybe not surprising for such a small country) but still a very fun experience. It was also incredible to see how many languages everyone spoke - presenters would switch from English to German to French to Luxembourgish with no hesitation at all.
Carl acted as tourguide for me and Daisy throughout the trip and we got to see lots of Luxembourg City. I had expected a sort of soul-less tax haven à la Dubai but was really presently surprised. Of course it is such a rich city (1 in 6 adults in Luxembourg are millionaires!), so it has a somewhat Disneyland feel with how perfect everything is. However, it had a lot more heart than I thought it would. The entire city is set out over a valley, which creates this incredibly unique landscape, a green haven in the middle of the city and lots and lots of incredible viewpoints.
The cultural scene is also booming, with performances in the main squares (including one where I somewhat unintentionally joined them on stage for a dance). There are lots of great restaurants and bars and (because of its richness) all the shops you would expect in a city twice its size. Perhaps if I hadn’t been visiting family who know it so well, I might have found it less interesting but I was really presently surprised by Luxembourg. Some highlights included the incredible Italian food we had at Notaro Ristorante and the very fancy lunch at Château de Bourglinster (which is out of the city and allowed us to see some of the very pretty Luxembourgish countryside).
Cultural Corner
I recently finished Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident, which was absolutely incredible. I’ve been a fan of her podcast Sentimental Garbage for a long time but had never gotten around to reading any of her books before this one. Set in Cork in the early late 2000s/early 2010s, this is one of the most realistic depictions of young adulthood I have ever read. There’s lots about friendship, family, career stress, womanhood, sex and the shittiness of being in your late teens and early twenties. It felt real in a way that no other book really has - as if a friend had written it or something. Honestly just go and read it - you will have an excellent time. Here’s one of my favourite quotes:
“It’s tempting, when you’re talking about your sex life as a young woman, to slip into little melancholy asides about how you gazed heavy-lidded at the ceiling while a dull brute pummelled away at you. Sadly, I don’t think I can say any of that and get away with it. The sex was unsatisfying but I couldn’t have been more obsessed with having it.”
I’m actually very behind on my reading, as my re-read of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and my audiobook of Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island are both proving rather unsatisfactory. Both have very good moments but are just proving a bit of a struggle to get through. I’m hoping that Elizabeth von Arnims’ The Enchanted April, which I’ve just started on Verity’s recommendation will revive my reading interest. Very unusually for me I have read what I would perhaps call a self-help book (bleurgh) or maybe a book about life, Natasha Lunn’s Conversations on Love. It’s made up of a series of interviews with different ‘experts’ or authors on aspects of love. When I was reading it, I raced through it and I’m not sure if I’ve ever underlined a non-academic book quite so often. On reflection, a lot of what it said was stuff I already knew but I think maybe reading it was still quite helpful. Nevertheless, some of the ‘experts’ she interviewed were a little questionable (I am still irritated by the interview she included with Emily Nagoski, supposedly a sex expert, where Nagoski claimed that “desire is bullshit”.) I’d still recommend the book but perhaps take it with a grain of salt.
As my reading is slightly faltering, my TV-watching has ticked up. I started The Sopranos recently and am really loving it. The inclusion of the therapy sessions, the mob plotlines and the family stories at the heart of everything just works so well. It’s also just a very well made show and it’s quite fun to immerse yourself in this slightly schtick-y world of the New Jersey mafia in the 1990s/early 2000s. The theme song is also incredibly catchy.
Talking of music I have been very into a couple of songs recently. I received quite an education in American country on the Utrecht cycle when Molly was on aux and I won’t lie some of the songs really slapped even if they were corny as hell. Better Together by Luke Combs was the stand out - it is so cheesy but so good. I’m still on my Chappell Roan fix (Coffee is a new discovery) and watching a deep dive YouTube video into why The Beatles split up has also made me revisit some of their later songs. Summer Song by Remy Bond and Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead are the top songs of the month by a country mile though. The former is very happy (sort of Lana Del Rey ish) and the latter is perhaps the saddest song ever written.
End Notes
The weather in Leiden is as usual, glorious one minute and atrocious the next but I’m squeezing as much as I can out of this one week at home before I head off on an inter-railing trip (which I am very very excited for). So far, I’ve been to the beach and finally sampled kibbeling (Dutch fish and chips) and been to Amsterdam to go and visit the Rijksmuseum (not all exactly my type of art but an incredible building and definitely worth a visit), eat Mexican food at my fave Señor Mustachio (trust me despite the name) and drink a pint at the very lovely canal-side terrace of Café Soundgarden. Lots of loveliness all around.
Ella x