The first leg
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 April 2007 06:52:01
The boy and I went down to Maastricht. This is my type of town. Its medieval heritage is still very evident in the centre of town with its winding, narrow cobblestone roads and fortress walls:
We were fortunate enough to be there on the Easter weekend so we went to the very large Catholic church there that is at least 1000 years old. I managed to understand the Latin parts of the service but not most of the Dutch. There was, however, a fantastic choir to keep me entertained. This is looking up at the entrance:
From here we took a day-trip to Valkenburg. This is a beautiful medieval town with a ruined castle on the hill. Unfortunately, our trusty Lonely Planet was right when it talked about an over-commercialised centre. The streets in the city were packed with people, overflowing from bars and cafes. It was a bit too crowded for my liking and we weren't even there in summer!
Underneath the castle (and in other places around the city), there are caves carved out of the sandstone. There are some great stories about Jews hiding out there during the war and also about Allied forces setting up camp there in order to defeat the Germans. What has been left behind are amazing charcoal drawings:
From here we travelled up the middle of the country to Den Bosch. Here I had to trust my Lonely Planet and try the local delicacy here which they describe as a 'calorie-inducing' food. It is like an enormous profiterole. Coated in chocolate, this fist full of pastry has cream inside. Here is the stages of the messy eating process:
It was then to Amsterdam to meet my parents at the airport. It was the start of their international mystery tour. We stayed in Amsterdam the night (and visited the Van Gogh museum). We then got a plane to Pisa and the train to our accommodation for the night. We then started the 12km Cinque Terre walk:
These are 5 cute little fishing villages perched on top of the coastline. Parts of the walk are a bit of a hard slog but we managed 3/4s of it (4 villages) and then by-passed the hardest 2 hour stretch with a boat trip:
Our legs recovered overnight and then we packed up ready to go to our next destination. Arriving at the train station we realised that the trains were on strike all day so it was an 100 euro taxi ride to Genova where we were able to catch the next leg of our train to Nice. Since we are only staying overnight, we did an opentop bus ride. It started to rain so we made the most use of the little plastic bags that our earphones were provided in:
It's a nice town with a beautiful old French flavour:
The beach is pretty nice too:
Next onto Narbonne to pick up our canal boat....