Maastricht - Part 1

 As I mentioned before Piet and Corrie bought us each a travel card that would allow us one day to travel wherever we wanted.  We wanted to go somewhere new, somewhere far away...an edge of the country.  We chose Maastricht because its right on the German/Belgium border and planned to go to the point where the 3 countries touched.  That didn't happen...but we definitely had a fun day anyway. 
Since Lars had planned Valentine's day, it was on me to plan this.  We had more planned than we actually got to do..mainly because the one thing I had planned as a Valentine's day present to him didn't post on their website how long it would take, lol.  Then, by the time we were done with that I was not feeling well at all so we decided to go home.

 We rode the train for about 2 hours that day and I loved getting to move from Holland into The Netherlands.  When we exited the train it was at a bustling train station with no idea of where we were supposed to go....and I giggled because for once, we were on the same footing. the photo above was inside the train station.  I thought I got a pic of the outside but I apparently didn't have a brain that day.
We considered taking a cab to our first destination, but when we heard that we were only about a 5 minute walk, we walked instead.  This building was right outside the train station...I would love to live in that tower :). 

During our walk there was a traffic intersection where this beauty lived...

and lovely buildings on each side with a lovely market set up in the center. No photo of the market...lack of brain and I felt we were in a rush to get to the boat on time.  I wish I had just stopped a second and snapped a shot of it.

I love the one red building in the middle...it makes me smile :).

We walked across a large old bridge...one that we went under a few minutes from when this was shot.
We were on our way to a boat tour that would take us to the edge of Belgium and turn around.  I had imagined a tour boat with seats like in a bus and I'm glad that I was wrong...

 

  

 

 Below is the bridge that we walked over to get to the boat.

 Below is a photo of the menu and the photo below it is the inside...specifically the Vlaai item on line one which was this awesome apple pie-type thing.  I could have just sat and eaten that all day.

This was so good I couldn't stop long enough to take a photo until the end :)

 

 

 

 

My handsome husband with a little grin on his face.  He liked the boat ride :).

 

 

  On the ride we saw some really beautiful buildings and a cave..there are many tunnels and caves in this town, including an underground vault that was used to store treasures during the war. 

In the photo above where you can see a tower, that is an old castle that is now owned by a famous violinist and it is being fixed up by him. He currently resides in the white house that you see immediately above these words. The violinist is André Rieu and you should really look him up on Youtube.

I'm assuming this is one of the caves..though there was no stairway or anything to get into it.

This is near the border to Belgium and also where we turned around.

This is part of the old prt...boats would pull up here to unload.

This, my friends, is a fuel (Shell) station on the water :)

So I'll work on part 2 of Maastricht - this one was getting kinda long.  I took a lot of photos on the boat :).