Warning… the next couple of weeks there will be an overload on travel posts about the recent weekend break we did to our lovely neighbouring country… Holland! If you like little towns, big cities  (at day or at night), gardens, palaces and cheese, you’ll be spoiled rotten these coming weeks as we all fitted that into our 3 day visit 🙂 A couple of months ago we decided to plan another weekend break  and our choice was easily made… Holland… We always enjoy our daytrips and weekend breaks overthere. Plenty to see and do, friendly people, great food and lovely little towns!

Last year we did a daytrip to Utrecht and we vowed to be back (as you could read here), so we decided on staying in a little town right near Utrecht so we could visit this beautiful city during our weekend break, but more about Utrecht in later posts!

This first post will be about this little town we stayed in : Zeist. We made a reservation in Hotel Figi for two nights including breakfast and one dinner. The room itself was a typical hotelroom but it was quite spacious and spotlessly clean. Unfortunately the bed could’ve been better. It was too narrow (OK, we’re spoiled at home with our kingsize bed…) and the mattress was just too soft… The first night I didn’t sleep very well because of this, but the second night was a bit better (just because I was just so dead tired of walking around Utrecht for hours on end… I literally could ‘ve slept anywhere!).

The first evening we enjoyed a lovely diner in our hotel. Below you can see two photos… I know… too good to be true 😛 ! And I also include another photo of the hotel : our hotel also had a theatre and cinema and these stairs lead to the theatre in the hotel… quite nice isn’t it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before diner though we made a lovely walk in Zeist. We walked down the Slotlaan towards the castle. The road towards the castle is really nice to walk. It’s lined with lots of trees and the buildings on both sides of the road are very beautifully renovated. These buildings were actually lived in by an evangelical community. In the 18th century this community (the Hernhutters) had the permision of the  ‘Lord of Zeist’ to settle in the gardens of the castle. They used the castle as their head quarters and they built two places along the driveway which makes it now very beautiful and grand to walk towards the castle  Broederplein and Zusterplein.

The castle itself was built in the 17th Century and it is surrounded by an English landscape garden with a moat. In the 1960ies the castle was renovated and it is now used as a conference center and a wedding location.

The next  morning we did the other part of the Slotlaan but as we wanted to take the bus to Utrecht at noon, we only walked around briefly, visiting some shops here and there.

Zeist is very beautifully located. It is situated within the National Park ‘Utrechts Heuvelrug’ and thus has a very green character. It was the perfect base for our weekend break…

More about our trip next week when I will tell you a bit more about the first day of our trip, when we visited the Royal Palace in Soestdijk. Don’t miss it!

Love, Kathleen

Here you can read more about a lovely Dutch town : Amersfoort.