After the classic generator breakfast, we took our journey to Utrecht. There we took public transportation and a nice walk to Aurea Imaging which was on a beautiful campus of a bunch of start up companies. Walking through, I definitely got a modern work vibe where people were in business casual clothing, there was unique seating and looked like a lot of collaborative work spaces. Then we went into a lecture where Ruan taught us about why he came to Utrecht, the company’s purpose and how they operate. He went in depth on how they help breeders and growers through their many different forms of technology in orchards. They work with farms all over the world, including one very close to my home town in New Jersey which I will definitely have to check out. I find it interesting how the concept will make it easier to breed strains of flowers or plants but it is currently only affordable for larger farms since the technology and service is expensive. It shows that almost everything comes at a cost whether it is money or time. We then ate a typical Dutch lunch along with the workers of the different companies in the building, which was cool to be immersed in that culture.

We then got a tour by Sophia of central Utrecht which was very cute, kind of like a smaller version of Amsterdam. We stopped at places like her own university, a church, a great gelato shop, a very cool neon tunnel, a library, saw many canals and so much more. Seeing all of the small details that make up such a cute town is what I love and what made it unique. I loved getting to hear about this town from a local perspective and compare it to Amsterdam. It had much less tourism and I also saw a lot of smaller boats going down the canal instead of larger boats for tourism and business. We then walked a little bit more just to take in another beautiful city while visiting the Netherlands. I love being able to explore other parts of the Netherlands while on Plus3.