Happy Anniversary to Us!

In honor of our anniversary, John got to take Easter Sunday and Easter Monday off work and we traveled to Maastricht to celebrate. Maastricht is in the southern part of the Netherlands, in a small area that juts out into Germany and Belgium. The area is called Limburg, and it is the first time we've been to an area of the Netherlands that is not completely flat! Our trip was short, but complete with a stay in a castle, tour of Maastricht, hikes in the hills, and even a glimpse of the cyclists taking part in the famous Amstel Gold Race as they started out from Maastricht's Centrum.

This stay in Maastricht had been planned long before we even knew there was such a thing as the Amstel Gold Race, but two days before we left, John discovered that this famous Netherlands race, in its 41st year, was set to take place on Easter Sunday, the morning we were planning to arrive in Maastricht. About 300 cyclists entered the race this year, but we figured since it's a 2-hour drive to Maastricht and the race was set to start in the morning, that we wouldn't be bothered by the crowds. Just as we got into the city and came to our first stop light to take us to the Centrum, the light turned red and police began arriving to block the intersection. Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, we were excited to see that it was just a couple minutes past 10 and that this traffic blockade was likely for the Amstel Gold rather than a funeral procession or an auto accident. Sure enough! A few minutes later we had front row seats to see the start of the race. We witnessed sponsor cars with ads all over them, medical vans, cars carrying about 10 bikes each, and radio trucks speed past ahead of the racers. Then we honked the car horn and snapped a few pictures as the 300 or so cyclists whizzed by us on the start of their 253 km race. It was perfect timing, only took about 10 minutes to watch, and we got to sit in the comfort of our warm and dry car for the show!

About the time we decided to take a self-guided walking tour of the Centrum and found a parking spot, the rain that had pelted the car all morning let up. It would continue to rain, off and on, the whole time we were in the Maastricht area, but we had our handy rain coats so it didn't bother us too much. It was a bit warmer in that part of the country than it has been in Amsterdam, so less wind and warmer temperatures made the rain very bearable. We spent the morning wandering around Maastricht, seeing the old cathedrals, the famous city wall, Maastricht University, rivers, and shopping streets. Maastricht is much smaller than Amsterdam, less crowded (especially on Easter Sunday), and the area has plenty of hills and valleys so we could look out onto entire cities and villages. One of the art museums, the Bonnefanten Museum, happened to be open on Easter Sunday so we decided to visit it with our handy museumjaarkarts, which made the entrance to the museum free. We were starving when we got there and thought getting something to eat at the cafe there would be a good idea. It would have been a good idea, however when the waitress came over John was still deciphering the menu and Erin decided to just order some tea while he figured out what he wanted to eat. Bad idea. The waitress never returned. We never got anyone's attention and even going up to the bar, where people went to pay their bills, didn't get us any attention from the staff. Finally, after Erin finished her tea, we decided to just leave the money for the drink on the table and go have a picnic in the car (luckily we had brought some snacks with us from home). We figured bananas, crackers, nut bread, and grapes should tide us over and we could have an early dinner. Our experience at the museum cafe was really the only bad one of the trip, thank goodness! We went back into the museum, saw all the art, and then decided to find our hotel.

We were both very excited about staying in a castle. Hotel Kasteel Geulzicht was a bit outside Maastricht, in Berg en Terblijt, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. We booked the room through a discount website (or course!) so we figured we'd end up with one of the smaller rooms. The castle only has nine guestrooms to begin with. As it turned out, we got the largest room in the place! We had a beautiful view, the bed was more comfortable than it looked at first, and we even got a buffet breakfast with our stay that was really good! After checking in and thoroughly admiring our room, we drove back into Maastricht to eat dinner. Being Easter Sunday, most restaurants were closed, but we finally walked around and found a Thai place that was on Erin's list of "top 10" restaurants in Maastricht according to one website. It truly deserved it's place in the "top 10." We really enjoyed the set menu we ordered, with samples of lots of different dishes, and we ate waaaaay too much!

Easter Monday is a holiday in the Netherlands, so we saw people biking, hiking, and travelling around everywhere we went! We spent most of the day hiking, after spending as much time as possible just hanging around in our room in the castle before check-out. There were several trails around the castle that we enjoyed, but eventually we decided to head out and try to find Mount Sint Pieter, a high hill in the southern part of Maastricht that affords great views of the cities and towns all around. We hiked up the hill and around the area for several hours before finding our way back to where we started and the cafe for some lunch. Sometimes it's fun to start hiking around without a map, though after going one direction for over an hour we decided we might need to turn around since this trail was obviously proving to be quite lengthy! After lunch, we noticed the office was selling trail maps and decided to see exactly how far we had gone. Yes, the trail we had decided to follow would have taken over 4 hours to complete, so turning back around had been a good idea, especially since it took a little longer to drive home to Amsterdam with all the holiday traffic. We'll have to return to Maastricht someday to tour the caves at Mount Sint Pieter and spend more time hiking around there. Even with rain and fog, the views and the forests were beautiful!

Maastricht is definitely a place we want to go back to, when John once again has more time off of work. Unfortunately, today John is back at work and Erin is back to her semi-normal routine of life in Amsterdam. Hopefully John will again have regular weekends without work sometime in the near future and we can go on more little trips. This weekend was a much-needed break. Happy Anniversary to us!