A short walk from the hotel we stayed in in de Bilt, there was a park. In the park, along with a myriad of walking tracks, people with dogs and cyclists, there’s a whole load of sculptures. They were all made by the same artist, Jits Bakker (1937-2014). And, given we had a free day, we decided to treat the girls to a lovely walk.
Clearly, given it was full of sculpture, it was a great treat for me as well. Mirinda enjoyed the fact that she had no driving to do.
And it gave Emma a real opportunity to catch up on her wee-mail*. Freya just enjoyed an opportunity to wag her tail almost continuously.
Jits had his studio in de Bilt and set up the sculpture park in 1996 so people could see his works for no other reason than to experience art. In 2009, he donated his works to the Utrecht Council and they maintain the collection and park now.
He was a real renaissance artist in that he didn’t want to be limited to a single style or form. He has works that resemble Giacometti and Rodin, for instance. But he also worked in different mediums as well.
We strolled around his sculptures today on a ridiculously sunny day (though still bloody freezing), enjoying the vitamin D as well as the art.
As we strolled around, Mirinda discovered the actual quantity of bikes in the Netherlands and how often a pedestrian needs to watch all directions at once.
Of course, it would be just grand if the millions of bikes meant a reduction in the number of cars but, no, that is not the case and so there are shared spaces everywhere. At least, the deeper we walked into the forest, the fewer means of transport there were.
Near the entrance to the park was a big cafe so we decided to have a latte/hot chocolate only we broke the rules we didn’t know existed. (You pick a table outside, sit down and someone will take your order.) Though, to be honest, the woman at the counter who took our order clearly broke the rules first.
The cafe was heaving so we sat outside in the freezing cold for as long as we could stand it after our drinks finally arrived. While we were there, I watched a group of children, aged between about 5 and 10 years old, playing kick about. One of them, a lad of about 6, was an expert at diving, rolling around dramatically and making red card tackles leading with his boots.
Obviously, as a 6 year old this was all pretty innocuous but it did make me wonder where he picked it up. I would assume he has a professional footballing hero who does it a lot and he is trying to emulate his hero by doing it too. That’s a bit sad.
Fortunately, I didn’t see any of them spitting. A minor miracle in itself. And, who knows, maybe the 6 year old will grow up be another Cristiano Ronaldo – after all he has the acrobatic ability.
Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for Ronaldo doesn’t mention how often he’d fall over and roll about. You’d think an exceptionally brilliant footballer could manage to play without falling over all the time.
Anyway, eventually, it was too cold to remain sitting still so we made our way back to the hotel where we slept through a podcast about quantum physics. As you do. Mind you, I did learn that Newton thought his theory of gravity was absurd.
After eating way too much last night, we decided to just have French onion soup and dessert tonight. The thing is, while the food was excellent, the staff were a bit hit and miss. Sadly, this has been the case for our whole visit. Mirinda is determined never to stay at Van der Valk, de Bilt again.
There is also a lot food on the plates. For example, Mirinda had a chicken wrap for lunch. It was big enough to contain an entire chicken. Biggest wrap in the world. Still, I guess it’s wrong to complain about being given far too much food. It might be for the American market.
It would be awfully remiss of me if I didn’t include this photo of the stairwell in the hotel.
It’s nice that they all have spotlights.
PS: Ina, if you’re reading this, I’ll send you an email re Hamburg. I don’t use Facebook beyond posting my blog.
* I can’t take credit for this. Wee-mail is a Mirinda original idea based on how often Emma sniffs everything when out for any walk, anywhere.
