Maastricht

Because Cameron had thursday and friday off last week for Thanksgiving, we decided we wanted to head somewhere within the Netherlands for a night.  Pretty much everyone we asked said Maastricht was definitely the place to go.  It didn't disappoint.  What a beautiful little city.  It's right on the southern tip of the Netherlands before you get to Belgium.  It's the oldest city in the Netherlands.  We couldn't get over what a beautiful little place it is.

We left friday morning and got back saturday night.  It's a 2.5 hour train ride away.  (Well...it's supposed to be.  I'll get into that later.)  Andy was great on the train.  We've discovered this special little part of the train that's technically for bikes, but it has a great amount of room for us and no one else is really around so Andy can be as loud as he wants.  It makes train rides so easy and enjoyable! We got to our airbnb place, and it was absolutely beautiful.  Way better than the pictures and it was in a perfect location.  What a treat!  After that, we headed out to explore.  We got to the Basilica of Sint Servaas, so we explored that for a bit.  Beautiful.  It's a church that's built on the tomb of St. Servaas, who died in 384 BC.   Andy fell asleep in his stroller, so we took advantage of that and got some delicious hot chocolate.  The rest of the night, we wandered the streets, went to the other side of the city across the river, and had a surprisingly good dinner.  (So far, we haven't been impressed with Dutch food.)

The trip was great, but had a few hiccups.  First, both Andy and I were sick.  I felt it coming on Thanksgiving night.  Isn't that the worst feeling ever, when you know you're getting sick?  Ugh.  Anyway, I managed okay, but poor Andy really didn't feel his best.  Especially since he's teething, too. That takes me to friday night, when Andy decided he didn't want to sleep from about midnight to 3AM.  He's been a perfect sleeper for months now, so we're not used to this kind of sleep interruption.  I can't even complain too much, because Cameron was really the one who helped him.  Andy eventually ended up in bed with us, but none of us really slept well even once he fell asleep.   Despite being pretty tired, we had a great morning.  We walked along the river passing the different bridges in Maastricht and finished up at the beautiful park.  Our plan was to jump on the train about 1:30 and have Andy take his nap on the train ride home.  Perfect plan, right?  We thought so too.  Imagine our surprise after we'd gone just two stops on the train (and we were about to nod off and Andy was asleep, too) when someone came and told us we had to get off the train.  There was an interruption that day that meant we had to take a bus to a different train station where the train would take us to Amsterdam.  Of course Andy woke up, never went back to sleep, and was furious.  The bus ride ended up being 45 minutes, most of which Andy screamed.  We got to the train station and just missed the train and had to wait another 30 minutes.  Anyway, we eventually got home, but the whole journey took about 5 hours.  With a very cranky Andy.  And a cranky Cameron and Stephanie, too.  One of those adventures we'll look back fondly on someday, I'm sure.  Really though, despite its unpleasant end, it was a wonderful little trip!  Maastricht is so charming.  It was so nice to visit somewhere more low-key, where we didn't have a giant list of must-sees.  We had a great time!

Reading is Andy's favorite these days!

Sint Servaas

Sint Servaas' tomb

This is Cameron's favorite picture of me. Russian mafia, I know.

The kitchen in the adorable apartment we stayed in. 

Excuse my reflection.  The back garden of the apartment.  Beautiful, right?! 

Don't you just want to move here?  I do.

The main square in Maastricht.  The Christmas Market opens next weekend, so it was being put together while we were there.

The main shopping street in Maastricht.

Us hanging out in Weert (a completely random, small city) waiting for our train to Amsterdam.  Cameron was thrilled to be there.