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Published: August 7th 2007
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Another beautiful day!!! I hope we don’t get too used to it! We decided to spend the day in Maastricht, which was billed in our guidebook as the ‘gem of the south’ (of the Netherlands). Eric (Jonathan's cousin who arrived yesterday to stay with us for a week) was excited, I think, to explore a small Dutch town and the girls were excited to have someone with us on one of our travels. We had to change trains in Liege, but each leg of the trip was only about ½ hour long. We got to Maastricht at about noon. We took a pretty walk from the train station across the river and lunched in front of a huge cathedral. It is a really pretty little town. We decided to wander to St. Peter’s Fort which was just outside of the town. Along the way we found pieces of three old medieval town walls. The earliest one dated from the 1200’s and the newest from the 1500’s. But Eric discovered what would be the highlight of the day. We were wandering down a tiny side street and Eric saw an open door with a big wheel in it, like the wheel from
Medieval City Wall
There are remnants of three city walls throughout the town. This is the first one which dates from the 1200s. a mill. He said, ‘this looks interesting.’ We walk in and are immediately hit with the most amazing smells of freshly baked bread and pastries. It was a water wheel mill that had been in operation since the 1400’s. The attached bakery served up little delights to the folks in town. Eric had been dying for an appfelflap (apple turnover) and here they were. They were unbelievable.
As we continued on our way we passed a small animal park with all sorts of deer and goats. The fort was interesting but not that accessible. Eliza fell asleep in the stroller as we got there and the sun was HOT in the midday sky. We had read that their were Roman tunnels built here but couldn’t find them. Someone directed us to another site across town a little ways so we decided to head there. Unfortunately we arrived there at 2:30 and the one and only tour of the miles of cool, dark tunnels left at 2pm. Bummer. We relaxed in the shade and then decided to make our way back to town so Eric could get more appfelflaps. On our way we passed through some remnants of an old
city gate that had turrets like a castles and all sorts of cannons across the lawn. We made it back to the bakery just before they closed and Eric bought more treats and we filled our water bottles.
We took the 5:15 train heading to Liege, but when we got to Liege there was a 40 minute delay in our connection. Luckily the train was air conditioned so it wasn’t too miserable to wait. We came home and I bathed the girls while Jonathan made some grub for dinner. After the kids were in bed Jonathan and Eric went out on the town and had some beers while I tried to deal with the travelblog mess. Had more drinks when they came home and didn’t make it to bed until after one. Yikes. It is good to have someone visiting.
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