Less than an hour later we were in our hotel, and I started channel surfing (TV in foreign countries is great :) I found some smut on one channel, and on the very next channel...

...Finding Nemo hahaha. Bit odd putting the kids channel immediately after the porn isn't it?!

The next day (Saturday) we biked from the hotel into central Utrecht - bloody nice!

Pedestrians, cyclists, and scooters - constantly fighting it out for space!

Biking in turned out to be a bad idea, as it took us ages just to find a place to lock them.

Evidently the locals just lock them anywhere they can hahaha!

There was a weekend market on with heaps of flower stalls, no doubt from the fields we had just passed the day before.

Utrecht is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands (with Amsterdam being the largest), and is home to around 300,000 weed-loving Dutch. It has the second-highest number of cultural events in the Netherlands too apparently (after Amsterdam). We grabbed some lunch and whipped into a tourist office to see what else was around. There were a couple "picturesque villages" on the outskirts of town, one with a castle - sounded good enough.

The legs were a little stiff but they soon got back into it (they love the punishment! ;)

About 10kms west of Utrecht is the tiny little village of Haarzuilens, home to fuck all but very picturesque!

Just around the corner from the village centre is De Haar Castle - the largest in the Netherlands. The castle is an ancient ruin that was rebuilt around the turn of the 19th century when both it and Haarzuilens were destroyed by fire. The trees surrounding the castle are said to have originated in a forest on the other side of Utrecht. Local lore has it that several houses in Utrecht were demolished in order to move the trees to their new location and to give the castle's landlord his precious bloody forest without the decades of delay usually required to grow new trees.

Dav rather liked the statue of the little naked boy in the garden hehe. Dirty Australians!

More cool off-road paths en route back to Utrecht.

London has house boats on its canals; Utrecht just has huts on theirs.

We'd only done a measly 25kms for the day, but I still needed a beer - a big beer ;)

As I mentioned earlier, the Netherlands are famous for their very relaxed view of drugs, and coffee shops (that don't just sell coffee if you know what I mean) are plentiful. Despite that being the case, I don't think we saw any brain-dead druggies wandering the streets.

Dav and I just had a couple coffees...

...but the bloody bear went nuts on the green stuff...

...and then just sat there with a peaceful look on his face, staring off into space ;)

Central Utrecht at night.

After our, umm, coffees, I did a little more channel surfing before calling it a night. Some Easter church service on one channel...

...and more porn on the next, hahaha!