Our second to last full day on our exploration of the Netherlands! We were starting in Utrecht and heading to Eindhoven with a stop in Den Bosch along the way.

The Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in the New St. James Church

This morning we had to check out from our accommodations in Utrecht. We were up at a pretty reasonable hour, and got all of our things packed up and ready to go. The car was packed and we were on our way by about 9:30 a.m. The drive drive down to Eindhoven for our last stop of the trip was only about an hour, so we did not need to rush. Our check in time wasn’t until 4:00 p.m so we had a fair bit of time to play with. In looking at the options available to us for exploration along the way, it looked like a pretty good stop was available to us about halfway through the drive, in 's-Hertogenbosch (also know as Den Bosch, which is way easier to type out).

In doing some research for the trip, I had decided that I wanted to make a stop and see the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in 's-Den Bosch. Hieronymus Bosch is one of my all-time favourite artists, and so I thought it would be cool to tour the museum in his hometown. Hieronymus Bosch is the most famous inhabitant of 's-Hertogenbosch, but paintings by Bosch can no longer be found in the city. This also applies to the Netherlands as a whole, because many of Bosch's works were taken to Spain as spoils of war during the Eighty Years' War.

One of the interesting sculptures out front, based on the artist’s work

The idea for Jheronimus Bosch Art Center came from the Municipality of 's-Hertogenbosch. The New St. James Church had been empty for some time, and was no longer used by the Catholic Church after 2002. It was also a monument that could not be demolished, and was located in the city center. The idea to show Bosch's works in the city through copies was not new. The idea to create a separate museum and to show all his works probably was. The centre was opened on 26 March 2007. I wasn’t sure how Mom and Mackenzie were going to feel about it, but I was excited to check it out.

The drive-in to Den Bosch was pretty easy, and we were there within about an hour. We were a little bit early, and despite taking a little bit of time to try and find a decent place to park we were at the museum a few minutes before it opened at 11 o’clock. They were pretty prompt about opening up, and opened the doors right on opening time. The museum is set inside an old church, and they’ve taken over the entirety of the building for the display. It’s a pretty amazing setting, and the building itself is quite beautiful.

As Den Bosch is the home town of Hieronymus Bosch, the museum is dedicated to the artist and all of his works. As he is quite a famous artist, most of the works in the museum or not actually originals, but reproductions of the famous pieces that are in other museums around the world. Still they do a good job of interpreting and explaining, his famous works.

Looking down into the gallery space, from the upper balconey. It gives you a pretty good feel for this unique museum.

One of the many weird and wonderful recreations of pieces from Bosch’s works.

For the background, Hieronymus Bosch is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oak wood, mainly contains fantastic illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime, his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell.

Little is known of Bosch's life. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfather's house. The roots of his forefathers are in Nijmegen and Aachen (which is visible in his surname: Van Aken). His pessimistic fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder being his best-known follower. Today, Bosch is seen as a highly individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand along with eight drawings. About another half-dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop. His most acclaimed works consist of three triptych altarpieces, including The Garden of Earthly Delights. Details here.

A pretty amazing replica of his most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights.

As for the museum, the most fun bit is that they’ve built models of some of the characters from some of his famous paintings to hang around the interior. It’s kind of a cool idea and not something I’ve seen before but totally appropriate for this artist’s work. We also noted that some of the characters are placed around the town, in various places as well. We spent a little while, wandering through the museum, checking out the works and looking at the various displays.

A couple of the characters that had been recreated and placed around the town.

The church has a tall tower in it, and we took the elevator up to the top for the view over the city. Sadly, it was still quite gray and cloudy so we couldn’t see too far, but I did get a nice view of the city. There was a tiny, scary spiral staircase that went back down and so we took that, stopping at each of the other floors to look at some of the other exhibits. They were not as interesting, but there were some cool things and it was worth a few minutes, exploring each of the small floors of the tower building.

A view of the cathedral from the clock tower in the museum.

On the ground floor, it was about time for the astronomical clock to go off, and we had an opportunity to see it in action. It was quite neat and worth checking out for a few minutes. Standing in one corner of the main hall, it is the working reconstruction of a medieval astronomical clock, including moving figures representing the procession of the Biblical Magi and the Last Judgement. From there, we left the museum and walked a short distance of the road to check out the massive cathedral in the town.

The reconstruction of a medieval astronomical clock. We watched the whole show, which was interesting.

The cathedral was huge, and certainly couldn’t represent the size of the small town that it was attached to. We were able to go inside and explore the immense and beautiful building. The Catholic Cathedral Church of St. John of 's-Hertogenbosch, is the height of Gothic architecture in the Netherlands. It has an extensive and richly decorated interior. Construction of the first St. John's church is thought to have started in 1220 and to have been finished in 1340. It was built in romanesque style, and stood on the same spot where the St. John now stands. In about 1340, building began to extend the church. This was done in the Gothic style that now dominates the exterior.

The outside facade of the huge cathedral.

This church has some of the most elaborate, and ornate, ceiling paintings that I have seen. In addition to all of the decoration on the ceilings, the building also has some incredible stained glass windows. We spent quite a while, walking around the cathedral, enjoying the views and taking in this incredible building.

After leaving Cathedral, we walked back to the car and headed out on our way again. In doing my research, I had discovered a small nature preserve just outside of town. There was apparently an old railway bridge that has been converted to a walking path that was supposed to be pretty interesting. So it seemed to make sense to go out that way and stop for a little bit as we were still too early to get to our new accommodations and get checked in. We drove out that way and the parking lot was already quite busy even though it was fairly late in the morning. We eventually got parked and did the short trail out to the railway bridge.

The bridge expanded out over a wetland area and there were some ducks and geese hanging out in the water. We were hoping for more birds, but that didn’t really materialize, but the bridge itself was pretty cool and so we checked that out for a few minutes before walking back to the car and heading back on our way to Eindhoven. The rest of the drive took a little more than half an hour, and pretty soon we were looking for parking in the city centre in order to try and find her accommodations.

Mackenzie on the old railway bridge.

Greylag goose coming in for a landing.

Sadly, it was almost all geese that we had seen before.

We did not walk the whole bridge, as we were a little short on time.

I think I made a bit of a mistake in choosing this place for our last stop. It was right dead in the centre of the old part of the city, right on the main shopping street. The problem with that was that it was very difficult to get to and so it took us quite a long time to figure it out. Eventually, we just ended up parking in a parking garage in the city centre and had to walk over to where the apartment was, lugging our bags through the city center. Sadly, we were about an hour before our official check in time and they wouldn’t give us the code in advance. So, we headed over to the local restaurants and had some food before finally being able to get into the place.

The apartment was literally across the street from the cathedral in Eindhoven.

The apartment itself is quite nice and was going to suit us quite well for the last couple of days of our trip. But the logistics were a bit of pain as we were going to haul all our gear back to the apartment and up the narrow stairs. Before we did that, we spent a little time walking around the old part of the city. As mentioned, we were in a very, very good spot, right in the heart of the city across the square from the main cathedral. We explored for little while before finally going and getting all of our gear and getting settled into the place.

We decided on having a fairly relaxed evening. I went out and grabbed us some drinks and some snacks and we ended up spending most of the evening playing cards and just relaxing. I think we were all a little bit worn out after the day. And as it’s getting to the end of our trip, I think we were all getting to the end of our energy as well.