Day 8

Off we went in the mega-van again, this time we drove south to Maastricht. Our first stop was the home of one of our most favourite people, Andre Rieu! Unfortunately he was in Canada when we came by, so we could only take pictures of his lovely house and gardens! Maybe if we go to Holland again sometime, we’ll have a chance to meet, seeing that we are his greatest fans, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind!

Andre's House

Very pretty gardens

Just around the corner from Andre (pretty much anyway) were the caves of Maastricht (sorry about the link for our "english only" readers, I tried to find one, but all I could come up with was the Dutch site!) We first had a coffee in the restaurant, and then went for a little walk around the area. I made a quick stop at the local playground. That was the last time I enjoyed any sort of playground equipment. You may have thought that I learned my lesson two days ago with my terrifying experience on the ‘spinner’ ride in Germany, that I would stay away from any and all kid’s toys in general. But, I figured that a teeter-tooter would surely be a safe and fun place to play on. Well, this final experience will keep me away from these places for a while. Bianca and I innocently jumped on, smiling, enjoying the ride until the ‘incident’. You see, there was a tire underneath both ends, so that you don’t ‘bump’ off the ground, its a little more ‘cushiony’ to bounce off the tire. Well, probably due to the fact that I was about 20 years too old to be on this thing, and a little too big, I paid the price – my butt was lodged (pinched) between the tire and the teeter-totter. OUCH! As I tenderly walked away (probably ran actually), I realized that this was the end of my playground experiences in Holland. I wasn’t going to take my chances with any other possible ‘wounds’ or ‘nausea’ anymore. (Sorry no pictures of the welt)

Entrance park to the Caves of Maastricht

Just micro-seconds before the "incident" :(

After our little walk around, we were ready to go on the tour of these Limestone caves. Our guide was absolutely fantastic! He spoke English (as that was what the majority of us spoke); he was very witty and had lots of interesting information about the caves. This underground world was built by human hands. There are over 200,000 passageways covering a total of 200km in these caves. Maybe that’s why we had a guide ;) We were able to walk in complete darkness, one hand on the person in front of us, the other on the wall beside us and made our way around a corner in the dark (although, someone in the tour group did cheat…he used his cell phone light to see a little), the few seconds that we did have in the pitch black gave a us a good sense of how dark it really is in the caves! They used these caves during the Second World War as shelter during the heavy fighting – they actually made wells, a chapel, a bakery and some kind of hospital ward down there too.

Entrance to the caves

Our source of light in the caves

Archways in the caves

Carvings

A whole wall of drawings

Religious altar

Really neat drawing of prehistoric animals, the picture was huge!

Another religious drawing (there were a lot of them)

After the cave tour, we walked around Maastricht for a little while, then left to go to the Margraten American War Cemetery. This cemetery has over 8,000 gravestones – all in the shape of crosses, and put at a slight angle to make the rows curve. Unfortunately, when we got there, they were just closing the cemetery, so we didn’t get a chance to walk around. But, we pulled ahead a bit on the road and found an area to park and walked thru a farmer’s field to get to the outside of the cemetery. We could see a bit of it, so I suppose that we could say that we did visit the cemetery…just not thru the right doors!

Various views of the cemetery from the farmer's field

Just a random shot of Alvar walking back to the van

**By the way, I incorrectly posted our Belgium visit/meal on Monday’s blog entry. It was actually today that we went there. I suppose I just tied it to the wrong traumatic playground incident with the wrong day!!**

Day 7

Today we ventured out to s’Hertogenbosch. After walking around a bit, enjoying lots of cobblestone roads once again, we went on a really neat boat tour through the Binnendieze. The tour was about 50 minutes, taking us thru the city by water, thru some really beautiful arch ways that originated in 1475 (since been re-done). It was an enjoyable ride, seeing some beautiful gardens on the walls, some neat statues and just the peacefulness of being in the middle of the city without much of any “city” noises around us.

The boats we took on the tour

Cool lizard drinking from the waterspout

The bridges and tunnels went on and on

After the tour we enjoyed sitting outside having a coffee and bossen bollen. Mmmm…for those who are not sure what these are, take a look at the pictures and let your stomaches grumble – cause – mmmm….they were soooo good! When we asked if they had them in the restaurant, they said no, but were willing to get some fresh for us from a bakery near by. Well worth the extra minute for them to go and get them!


We also visited the Saint Jan’s Cathedral in s’Hertogenbosch. The foundations of this Church were laid in 1185, and of course, like anything this old, it has been restored since then. All I can say about my first impressions were “WOW”. The Church was absolutely, incredibly beautiful. When we walked in the doors, my breath was taken away. I think the sheer height of the ceilings is what caught me first – the detail (and that was from what we could see from the bottom) was unbelievable, all the way up the walls to the top (either statues or paintings). I have to say that as much as I would love to be a part of something like this (artistically speaking), I would much rather remain a little closer to the ground…wouldn’t want to be the one at the top!!

Super high ceilings, tons of detail all the way up

Another ceiling shot

Inside shot as you first walk into the Church

Now this is an organ!

The detail is incredible, even on the outside

Beautiful shot of the Cathedral rising above the trees

We did a little walking around after looking at the Church, really cool cobblestone roads again(lucky me!), and we also noticed that the trees are really big in Holland in general - so we got a good shot of that too (there seemed to be a layer of moss on a lot of the trees too, it made everything very green).

Cobblestone!

HUGE tree trunks - and look at the moss on this one too!

Today was also the day where Alvar found his souvenir! We found a nice toy store that was FULL of model cars, trucks and pretty much any other vehicle imaginable. Alvar had already decided that a DAF model truck was what he wanted. I'm pretty sure we spent close to an hour in that store looking for one he could afford! Well, after much deliberation, he found the one that he liked (and a truck for Caleb too!). I think even Caleb liked Alvar's more than the one he got...if Daddy has a toy truck, it must be a really, really fun one to play with!

Alvar and Caleb's truck

Close-up of Alvar's DAF truck, isn't it a beauty?!

Day 6

So, hope you’re ready for a big picture post! This is the day that I went absolutely crazy with the camera…now, we did see a lot in this day, so it’s partly justified (in my mind anyway!). But I will admit that maybe, just maybe I went a tad overboard. Thankfully we do have a digital camera, so it’s not so bad; we can always delete the ones that don’t turn out! I believe I took over 300 pictures this day. There’s probably about 150 pictures of cobblestone alone (they were so interesting at the time!), but I suppose at some point they do start looking like all the other cobblestone roads we saw. Well, rather than ramble on about how many pictures I shouldn’t have taken, I’ll tell you a bit about our day!

We began our day in Giethoorn, and oh what a beautiful city!! We rented two little boats, Alvar driving one and his brother the other. We were allowed to travel 6km an hour – that was the limit! But, as we toured thru this little town, I almost wish it was a little slower than that. Quiet little canals going this way and that, cafés and people’s houses right on the water and one little bridge after the other crossing over the canals. Absolutely beautiful (did I say that already?!). Rather than go writing about it, I’ll post a few extra pictures today of our boat tour.

Fortunately, the tour thru the town was dry, but as soon as we headed out to “open water”, it poured! I happened to have two umbrellas with me – so Mom and I stayed quite a bit drier than the rest our family. Everyone else was completely soaked by the time we got off the boats. We went inside the restaurant for some coffee and hot chocolate to warm and dry up (as best as we could anyway) before leaving for our next destination.

We then went on to Germany to visit Bentheim Castle. This castle was first documented around 1050. Yup, that’s right, 1050 – that is OLD!! It’s been renovated since then (obviously), but still pretty neat to know how long ago it actually started. We took a self-guided tour in and outside of the castle. Again, I could go on and on, but it’s much more fun to look at pictures ;)

After touring the castle, we walked around the city of Bad Bentheim for a while. Well, most everyone walked, I practically ran. I just couldn’t get over how neat this city was! There was cobblestone everywhere, which in itself is really neat – but on top of that the area we were in was full of hills. So basically it looked like one street disappeared into the next and then into the next again – it was so cool!! I kept running on ahead to see where the street would go – I think I might have made Alvar a tad nervous doing this as I’d be out of sight fairly quickly! I just couldn’t contain myself here in Germany, it was so exciting to be in such an old city, tiny roads all intertwined, little stairways going here and there, a beautiful old church with interesting gravestones too – and of course the castle we had just toured thru in the middle of it all! Hamilton doesn’t have anything remotely close to this! Needless to say, this is where a lot of the pictures were taken by me, I just couldn’t help it!

After all the running around we sat down for refreshments; we were served coffee (for those who had coffee!) in cute coffee pots with cups/saucers to match (and another lovely biscuit to go with it too).

We walked back to the van, but on the way I decided to try this cool “spinner” in the middle of one of the squares (see picture below). I saw some kids on it earlier, and they looked like they were having fun, so I wanted to give it a try too. If I ever see one of those things again, ever, it will be too soon. As soon as I started spinning, I couldn’t stop. Seriously, I really couldn’t stop this thing on my own (what kind of practical joke was this?? There’s probably some secret hidden camera somewhere in that area that records all the crazy people who get on this thing and can’t get off!). I was starting to get sick and that was after only 3 spins, loosing all sense of balance really fast – but could do nothing but call out to Alvar to get me off!!! Alvar rescued me from this terror of a ride. When I got off, I couldn’t even walk straight – the whole world continued to spin as I walked along hanging desperately onto Alvar’s arm. It took a good minute or two for things to settle back down to normal (i.e. walk by myself!). I’ve learned my lesson now though; I’ll take a roller coaster any day instead of this thing.

We left Bad Bentheim and began looking for a place to eat some dinner. We typed in ‘restaurant’ in the GPS and somehow we ended up in Belgium! So, we thought, “why not!” and decided to stay and look for something good to eat. We came across a donair place – and because Alvar LOVES donairs we decided that we would eat there. The guy who served us didn’t speak any English, so that was a bit of an issue, but no worries, he found a customer in the restaurant who could help us out. Now, we assumed that the donairs would be the same here as they were back at home. Alvar usually orders extra meat because they tend to be kind of small otherwise. So, 7 out of the 9 of us ordered the donairs, 3 of the guys choosing the large size while the rest stuck with the regular. While sitting there we noticed one person eating something rather “large” at another table. We figured that was maybe the “big” one the guys had ordered (which consequently looked nothing like the donairs from back home!). Well, when the plates (or should I say cafeteria trays) came out, our eyes bulged and our chins dropped to the ground!! These were huge!!! Once again, the picture doesn’t do it justice – these things were absolutely massive (thankfully I actually ordered a pizza instead!!). Well, the boys did a fantastic job and ate the whole thing (and the girls with the medium sized ones too). We all had a good laugh over the food in the end, and it was even quite delicious, so well worth the size!

So, we visited 3 countries in one day, Holland, Germany and Belgium. I might never have the opportunity to do this again, today was quite the day – I think we all had a lot of fun. And, I really think that it justified the 300 pictures that I took – don’t you?