Sep 11 (Thursday) – Zutphen

Some photos of Deventer in the morning as we headed out.

We headed out through the lovely Dutch countryside…

********************************
Video of countryside
********************************

for our day trip to Zutphen.  We found a parking lot and soon headed into town.  To our surprise, it was market day.  So we did a little strolling of the market.

Zutphen is known as the Town of Towers and we saw a few of them.

And we did a fair amount of walking, covered a lot of town. 

The Old City Hall.  Closed but is used as a special events venue.

St. Walburga Church was lovely inside.  Not overly decorated but pretty.

**********************************
Video of St. Wlburga Church
**********************************

The special treat here was the chain library in the church.  There are only a dozen or so chain libraries in the world.  The libraries date from the Middle Ages to early Renaissance, when books were rare and extremely valuable.  Many of the books in these libraries are handwritten or are some of the earliest books made by the early printing presses.  The books were chained to a metal rod on the top of the shelves, giving the libraries their name.  It was a most interesting place.

We stopped at the new city hall for a bathroom break.  An interesting water feature…

********************************
Video of water feature
********************************

a model of the old town.

After lunch we walked down to a canal where we were hoping to take a boat ride on the canals.  For some reason they were closed that day so we didn’t get our ride.  But the boat docks were right by the Berkelpoort Walls. 

In our wanderings we also saw St. Janskerk. 

Mid-afternoon we decided we were done and headed back to the parking lot.  For some reason the payment kiosks wouldn’t accept any of our credit cards.  Paul finally went into a nearby store where they were able to give him a card that allowed us out of the lot.  The rest of the day was uneventful.