A Bit More Exploring...

Here are a few more pics around Maastricht. Included is an old church that was converted to a bookstore of all things. It's beautiful, but still a little strange. One surprising treat today was the ice coffee at a chocolate shop. It was more like a coffee float with vanilla ice cream, very strong coffee and whipped cream. Mmm...

Plans are coming together for Paris and we bought train tickets for Zurich!

Amsterdam

This weekend was entirely devoted to Amsterdam. Mom, Trent, Emma and Ethan flew in on Friday and I took the train to meet them from Maastricht. Five other Baylor girls and I navigated our first train ride successfully :) The city is really beautiful. The canals are lined with trees and beautiful, old canal houses. The flower market in the middle of the city was fabulous--the pictures don't do it justice. After trying to locate the hotel for awhile, I found my jet-lagged family in the Hotel Pulitzer. The hotel is made up of several canal houses that were connected and transformed into a gorgeous hotel.

In Amsterdam we visited the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank Huis (house). The cross-sectional picture is the business and house where Anne and her family hid for 2.5 years.

A nighttime canal cruise showed us all around the city (including the Red Light District). Oh and the 'coffeeshops' were everywhere. Soft drugs are only legal in private homes and coffeeshops. The shops have names like 'The Grasshopper' and the 'Magic Mushroom,' and the smell reaches into the street.

Despite this, Amsterdam is a very cool city. It really is relaxing and beautiful. The train home was a bit more exciting than the ride there. The whole family plus luggage needed to get to Maastricht. The train made more stops and took a long time. Getting near Maastricht we asked a lady getting off the train when the Maastricht stop was. She told us we needed to get off the train and walk down a couple of cars then get back on. The train was SPLITTING IN HALF and the other half went to Maastricht. So, we hurried off the train, down the platform and scrambled to sit in the right car. We made it though....Some other friends were not as lucky on their return trip!

More pics of Maastricht coming tomorrow...then Paris!!

Orientation Day in Maastricht

Today's main attraction was a walking city tour of Maastricht led by the wonderful guide Jola (she's in a pic below). She walked us around and really enlightened the group about the history of Maastricht and it has a lot (too much to mention here). The city was founded by Julius Caesar so that gives you an idea. We are about 20 min walking distance from Belgium so there's a lot of French influence and only 25 km from Aachen, Germany. Jola explained some of the difficulties with the Dutch language to us. Everyone reads Dutch writing and converts it to something very different in their heads and the dialects are very different all over the place. This area is more French while the North is more German. The other pics below are around Maastricht (which means to cross the river Maas). One of my favorite spots from the day is a 200 year old weeping willow and birch growing together. They make this totally shady spot by a small river that is gorgeous. Anyway, check it out!

Hi everyone! I finally made it over here to Maastricht--yay! After a long and rather exhausting day of travel it's nice to be settled in. First impressions off the plane in The Netherlands...cool place. So far the Dutch people have been very nice and speak English! Dutch is a crazy language though. It's like English and German got together and added some vowels everywhere. After we arrived in Amsterdam, we took a bus to Maastricht. It is about a 2.5 hour bus ride and while I napped most of the way there were lots of cows, sheep and a least one water mill. I knew being below sea level gave the country similarities to south Louisiana, but it sunk in when there was a blue heron walking among some cattails on the side of the road--ha!