Utrecht

112 metres and 465 steps, built between 1321 and 1382 and still the tallest church tower in the Netherlands. You go up by guided tour only, booked through the visitor centre on Domplein.

The Oudegracht runs a storey below street level, with quays and vaulted cellars at the waterline, made possible by a lock finished in 1275 that finally kept them dry. Warehouses then, restaurants now.

Gerrit Rietveld's 1924 house, arguably the only true De Stijl building, UNESCO-listed since 2000. Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 4pm and Friday evenings from May to August, by reservation only, twenty minutes east of the centre.

Self-playing musical machines, from pocket music boxes to fairground organs and the Phonoliszt-Violina. Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. The instruments are demonstrated, which is the entire point of the place.

The largest Rietveld collection anywhere, Dick Bruna's studio reconstructed, and the city's own history, on Agnietenstraat in the south of the old town. Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm.

Utrecht Centraal is the busiest station in the Netherlands and almost every long-distance route passes through it. From Amsterdam Centraal the Intercity takes about half an hour, several times an hour, all day.

The station sits inside the Hoog Catharijne mall and the old town is on the far side of it. Follow signs for Vredenburg or Centrum: five minutes on foot, and far less obvious than it ought to be.

Utrecht is smaller, flatter and calmer to cycle than Amsterdam, and the bicycle park under the station square is the largest in the world. Hire for a day and the whole city plus the Rietveld house opens up.

May to September, when the wharf terraces on the Oudegracht are open and the city eats a metre above the water.

January to March for cheap rooms in a student city that keeps its own life running right through the winter.

Late April for King's Day and the late-summer festival weeks, when the canal terraces are full from noon onwards.

Domplein first: the tower on one side, the cathedral on the other, and the empty square between them where the nave stood until 1674.

Drop down onto the wharf of the Oudegracht and walk the waterline south, cellar by cellar, as far as the Twijnstraat.

A terrace on the wharf itself, a metre above the canal, or the Neude if you want the louder version of the same thing.

Museum Speelklok for the machines, or cycle east to the Rietveld Schroder House on a booked slot.

Whatever is on at TivoliVredenburg, five halls stacked in one building, then the bars around the Neude and Janskerkhof.

Twenty minutes east by train to a walled medieval centre, and the Muurhuizen, a ring of houses built straight into the line of the old defences.

The largest castle in the Netherlands, rebuilt in full neo-Gothic by Cuypers from 1892, half an hour west with formal gardens laid out around it.