A trip to Kampen

I've not been posting for the last couple of days as I've been on a trip! My owner was invited to a birthdayparty and we decided to pay a visit to Kampen first, a city close to were the party was. My owner used to live close to Kampen and really wanted to visit some of her favourite spots again.

We took a train to Zwolle and there we took another train to Kampen.
Here we are leaving Groningen.

My first view of Kampen! It was cloudy and grey, but dry.

Kampen is a very old city and has a couple of it's gatehouses still standing. This one is the 'Koornmarktpoort' (Grainmarket Gatehouse). My owner told me it used to be painted white when she was a kid, but they restored it to it's original state.

As I was curious how the gatehouse would look with white paint I did a search on the internet and found an old picture of how it used to look.

And here it is in all it's current glory!

Across the street from the gatehouse there was this small statue of a boy carrying a fish.

There's an old story that the people of Kampen once caught a giant fish which they wanted to cook and serve to a visiting bishop. When they got the message that the bishop wouldn't be able to visit until a while later they were worried that the fish would not be good to eat anymore if they kept it that long. So they finally decided to put a bell around it's neck and they released it back into the river. They thought that when the bishop arrived all they had to do is stick their head under water and listen for the bell to locate the fish again.
Hmmm........ Something tells me they never saw that fish again.

I wonder if this is supposed to be the fish from that story, but according to my owner it was a different kind of fish. It looks big enough so maybe my owner is wrong.

Walking through the gate into the city!

When you come throught the gate this is the first thing you see: The Sint Nicolaas Kerk (Saint Nicholas Church) better known as the Bovenkerk (upper church). It's a really big church and has a very gothic look as you can see.

When it started to rain we took shelter in a comicbook shop and look what we saw there:

A Dunny!
I just had to get a picture of it to show Eve.

When it seemed like it was getting dry again we went outside again. Here you can see a typical street in Kampen with yet another gatehouse in the background. Not sure what the name of this one is though.

We had wanted to visit some more sites in Kampen, but it started raining even more at this point so we walked back to the station and from there went on to the birthday party. Maybe I'll get to visit Kampen again another time.

At the birthday party I met this rat! He was very friendly and we had a nice long chat.

After the party we went to the house of my owner's mother to spend the night. Tomorrow I'll post the pictures we took there.