You can see a grand total of three photo galleries on Flickr:
Maastricht: https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645794553499/
Château Neercanne: https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646272758963/
Valkenburg: https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646273390593/
After yet another bleak morning, it fined up considerably and we headed off to Maastricht. There are 'park and walk' facilities in Maastricht, but you have to pay for parking. Weirdly, the payments are billed in 1 Euro denominations, but in increments of 43 minutes, so 87 minutes costs considerably more than 85 minutes, but costs the same as 120 minutes.
We walked into the main 'old town' area of Maastricht, and stood there rather unimpressed. Part of that was I think due to the fact that we had seen so many old towns recently that Maastricht was just a little bit 'meh'. There was a big empty square, surrounded by pubs and restarurants, with a few churches on one side. Very concrete jungle.
We wandered around the outside of the churches for a while, and took some photos whenever some blue sky popped out from between the clouds. There was also an enormous, sombreing memorial for MH17 victims:
Churches of Maastricht
We then headed deeper into old town, where we came across many strange sights that we hadn't seen before. The old town had much more bustle about it than other old towns, and was full of locals rather than tourists. There were a couple of interesting buildings, but it was mostly things we had seen before. It was still quite pretty though:
Old town Maastricht
After heading back to the car, we made our way to Château Neercanne. The chateau is about 15 minutes out of Maastricht, and is a Michelin-star restaurant on the grounds of a magnificent old chateau. There was PLENTY of parking here, and we walked a short way to the chateau (passing several other closer parking spaces, sigh) and had a look around. The gardens below the body and walls of the chateau were absolutely beautiful:
Château Neercanne
On the way back dad stopped to talk to a guy with a metal detector in a field, who turned out to be hunting for Roman coins and the like. We also saw two little brats ripping the fruits of the vines at the chateau and chucking them at the fountain below. Dad sent the chateau an email afterwards, but we didn't do anything at the time, lest the beautiful grounds be closed to visitors because of such a thing. Little mongrels!
We moved on from the chateau towards Valkenburg aan de Geul, which had been recommended to us by dad's friends from Amsterdam. They weren't wrong! We rocked up to a parking place, where a local kindly gave us an all-day ticket she had bought, which she no longer had any use for. So we got free parking.
We knew there was an old castle and a ruined castle in the area, so we started walking. We eventually, by accident, stumbled on the grounds of Kasteel Oost, which is the old castle. The grounds were absolutely beautiful, and we later found out walking around the other side that it is the current host of the International Butler Academy, the 'finest of it's kind in the world':
Kasteel Oost - just beautiful!
We did some more walking to come across the ruined castle, which literally sits on a hill smack in the centre of town. Unfortunately it closes at 5:30, a full 90 minutes before we got there, which in my opinion is just silly in the middle of summer, when the sun doesn't even set until 9:30. Disappointed, we headed back into the centre of town. Not before taking some pictures though:
Ruined castle in Valkenburg
The centre of town was quite busy and full of tourists - yet another place on our trip that was no doubt quiet 20 years ago before the advent of the internet. We raced back to the car, seeing an approaching storm. We literally just left when it started raining. And it wasn't rain. Well it was, but it went from completely dry to uber-rain in an instant. We could barely see where we were going, and several drivers had pulled over.
Eventually the rain stopped, and we made it back to the hotel. For dinner, we headed back out to the pizzeria from our first night in Kerkrade, but this time ordering one large pizza between the two of us, rather than two large pizzas. We returned to the gelato place as well - at 9:30 instead of 11:30 my German was much more functional.
So as you can tell, today was an enormous day! Tomorrow we will drive up to Amsterdam and meet dad's friends. We'll stay there until Sunday, and on Thursday mum will arrive for the start of her trip! Don't expect anything as enormous as my blogs, but you'll find hers here:
http://fabeurope2014.blogspot.com.au/
See you in Amsterdam!
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