Look at Leiden

Leiden is only a 30 minute train ride from our home so we set aside a Saturday to return to Luke's beloved university town. It was a rainy Saturday but a fun Saturday. 

 

Classic Leiden: canal, bike and brick buildings. 

Two years and about 6 months later Luke had a chance he never thought he'd really have . . . to walk back to the building he stayed in, in Leiden. God works in astounding ways. 

We didn't go in, but there are still students living there and we had to take one more photo for evidence. 

I love this building. I can't get over the fact that people put so much beauty into a university chemistry building (now it has been converted into student housing and private apartments). 

House boats. They don't really travel, they just help diversify the real estate options in this very populated country. 

We can't visit Leiden without visiting a museum (or two) and this happens to be a shot of Leiden's new exhibit on archaeology finds in Netherlands soil. It is a fantastic, fascinating and creative exhibit. If you're in town you should be sure to take a look at it. 

De Burcht. 

That's it's name and the purpose was to be used as a save haven for the entire town of Leiden to take refuge in it in case of an attack or some other danger. It is long, long, long past being useful as a strong tower on the hill, on reason being that in my estimation Leiden would have to have a population under 1,000 inorder to fit them all in De Burcht. 

We decided to tour the Medieval fortress (de Burcht) as a way for us to find refuge . . . from the rain. Even though it doesn't actually have a roof. . .

While Leiden no longer needs de Burcht for safety reasons, it offers the best views of lovely Leiden. Keep scrolling, the best are yet to come. 

The church is quite dominant in these pictures, and after living in Europe for a couple of months I'm starting to grasp a tiny bit of how dominant church has been in their history  . . . the pews may be empty but the stones still stand as testimony that man longs to belong to something larger than himself. 

Just strolling along down memory lane.