We weren't too adventurous, we went to a nearby coffee house (which is a major chain in Maastricht it seems) called Coffeelovers. It was really delicious though. The menu was in Dutch but they had pictures of most of the breakfast options, and the names of things were fairly similar to English. We both got a caffeinated drink, and the same breakfast, which on the menu was titled Toastie Sunny Side Up. I wanted to take a picture of the inside of the cafe, because it was pretty nice, but didn't want people to be bothered while they were eating. So instead I took a picture of my pretty "Sweet Mocha" and Michel's espresso. And they both came with a yummy cookie.
After breakfast we headed over a bridge we hadn't been over before, the Hoge Brug, which gave us a nice view of an old stone enclosure to the South and the Sint Servaasbrug to the North.
Just on the other side of the bridge are parts of the old city walls. The major gate house (gate tower?) is one of the first things you'll see, and it's pretty cool! It's called Helpoort, and it was built, as the sign on it says, in 1229. Guys, Canada is really, really young.
The front of the gate house. The back of the gatehouse.
We walked through the gate, and discovered this gorgeous courtyard just inside. I want to hang out here every day that it's warm.
We headed into town from the gate and stumbled upon a bakery/mill that we'd wanted to find, the Bisschopsmolen. It's still got a working water mill in the middle of the town.
It was very beautiful, and very cool to see. We didn't stop in at the restaurant but did plan to go back to buy some bread and some pie from the bakery.
Almost immediately after leaving the mill, we stumbled upon another thing Michel had wanted to find, a specialty beer shop. We were having really good luck so far. And of course, we went in so Michel could drool/buy some things.
The beer lover in his natural habitat.
While we were in the store, it started to hail. We left but immediately took shelter in another section of the city walls (which we just happened to stumble upon!). We sat for a bit, then decided we didn't want to waste time sitting and got up to walk along the walls in the hail. This is where we took shelter.
This section of wall is particularly adorable, especially with all the houses that line it. Can you imagine living in one of them? What an amazing front yard.
We strolled down another street and found yet another section of wall to explore. This one has a small canal on the outside of the walls, and we can walk up along the top of the wall. This is also a place I want to spend time at on every nice day.
We walked as far as we could along the wall in one direction, and came to a section that's closed off for this part of the year. So, we headed back down to ground level and went through the archway to walk along the canal in the other direction. We quickly ended up along a path heading towards more of the old walls, with the canal alongside us. The hail had stopped a while ago, and now the sun was coming back out, which made for an extra beautiful view of the park around us.
We ended up at a small dam, which had a little bridge we could walk over that gave a nice view of the canal meeting up with its other section and flowing back through towards town.
We then headed back up onto the walls and stopped at the two different old lookouts along the way. The first one has tons of graffiti everywhere, but a really nice view.
The second one was not full of graffiti and also had a nice view. At this point, we were basically back where we started from.
The pretty view from the second lookout.
Looking back towards where we started from. You can see the tower to the left, which marks the corner of that pretty courtyard just inside the main gates.
We walked back down to city level, and towards Helpoort. There are some stairs just inside the gates so we headed up those (since we'd learned that going up is always the right answer) to check out the view. And, of course, it was another pretty one.
Then we went to head back towards town to stop at the bakery before heading back. There was yet another pretty section of old wall along the way.
And yes, we did get fresh bread and some vlaai (the traditional pie from our province, Limburg).
After taking a rest at home, we decided to check out the yarn shop in the city center before getting some groceries. The view was pretty nice as we headed back over the river.
We found the yarn shop no problem, how could you not with that awesome giant ball of yarn and the yarn-bombed bicycle?
We also stumbled upon an open air mall in the middle of the city center, which was very pretty as far as malls go.
And then something else amazing happened; we found the Boekhandel Dominicanen! It's this stunningly beautiful bookstore that's inside what used to be a church. It's amazing and we're lucky that there are windows looking into it from inside the mall. This is one of the main places we had both been excited to see in Maastricht and there it was! So we headed in of course.
I mostly just stared open-mouthed while taking pictures, as Michel browsed the books. It is so gorgeous, the pictures cannot do it justice, but I took a ton anyway.
It was a really amazing day, we saw so many beautiful things in Maastricht and I can't wait to go back to all of them! I currently have a severely stubbed toe which is keeping me housebound, luckily it happened just before bed AFTER this awesome day, but I won't be going back to any of these places in the next couple of days sadly.
It's a good thing I took so many pictures, I can just re-visit through them for now.
For more pictures of our day out and the beautiful bookstore, go here:
https://goo.gl/photos/Y2Ng5yDHyzYz1qsA9
https://goo.gl/photos/Y2Ng5yDHyzYz1qsA9
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