2017 Summer Social

This event will give you the chance to discover more about the attractions of Utrecht, a very interesting city for urban explorers. And of course it will be a great opportunity to meet up and discuss the wonderful new SENSE website!!
Registration for this event costs €25.00 for members and €35.00 for guests. Click ‘Register’ to sign up and pay. Just follow the simple procedure and you will be delighted to discover how easy it is to do so.

Our Summer Social will start at 11:00 when we meet at De Rechtbank, Korte Nieuwstraat 14, for an early-ish lunch: ‘2 belegde, dik gesneden boterhammen, groene salade, een zacht bolletje met een kroket en onbeperkt melk, jus d’orange en mineraalwater’ www.derechtbank.com. Vegetarian options need to be ordered in advance, so please indicate this preference in the comments when you register and pay.

At 12:45 we will head for the Oudegracht (about 12 minutes away) to board an exclusively booked boat for a 90-minute waterborne tour around the city, along the ‘Oudegracht, stadsbuitengrachten en singels’. The boat will depart at 13:15. We suggest you bring at least a bottle of water with you for this trip, particularly if the weather is sunny and warm.

We return to the Oudegracht at 14:45 and then walk to the Museum Speelklok (about 6 minutes away): www.museumspeelklok.nl We will divide into groups for two guided tours that will interchange after about an hour. This is bound to be an enjoyable experience with insights into the music, technological features and history of the self-playing instruments in the museum’s fascinating collection.

Admission to the museum is free to those of you who hold a museum card, so please bring it with you on the day. As many members probably do have a museum card, we deemed it wiser not to burden SENSE with a per-person admission charge for the group as a whole. This means that the €12 for entry is not included in the individual ticket price for the Summer Social.

The Museum Speelklok currently has a free-of-charge temporary exhibition, ‘Selfie Automaton’, featuring 42 mechanically driven humanoid and animal figures set up in various different scenes. The tour guide will make these move. This is a visual spectacle with the underlying question as to who is moving whom? If you are interested in seeing this exhibition, a tour starts at 16:30 and will take 20 minutes.

Our museum visit concludes the pre-arranged part of the day, but of course there will be plenty of time and opportunity for further socialising afterwards. Broers Stadscafe, Janskerkhof 9 has plenty of space and a very pleasant atmosphere for ‘borrelling’. www.stadscafe-broers.nl.
Another refreshing location worth a visit if you’re en route for the train station is Belgisch Bier Café Olivier, Achter Clarenburg 6a; this is a former schuilkerk in which many of the ecclesiastical features (including the organ!) have been retained. utrecht.cafe-olivier.be.

DOM UNDER, the underground archaeological space below the Domplein, is another attraction well worth a visit. And if any of you are planning to remain in Utrecht until dusk, you can view the Trajectum Lumen and even take -another - guided tour: www.trajectumlumen.nl.

We look forward to seeing you at the SENSE Summer Social in Utrecht on 8 July.