Hoge Fronten

A couple of days before our mini-trip to Liege, we took a walk to see what we had been calling "the North walls" but what's actually called the Hoge Fronten (which literally translates to "High Fronts"). It's what's left of the old battlements that were renovated between 1816-1822.

Located just North-West of the city center, it's now a public park (although there are parts that aren't accessible) which is popular for people to walk their dogs in. Only in Europe would a historic site be a dog park - it's fantastic. We simply walked up some steps from the street and we were on top of the walls, free to walk around and enjoy this bit of nature in the middle of the city. 

There are several entrances; we took the one off of Cabergerweg which only took about 10 minutes to walk to from the Markt Square. And this was our view: 

It really is a great place to go if you're feeling like you want to get away from the city. Being in the park felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, except for the high parts around the edge of the park, where you can see the not-so-pretty part of town that now surrounds it. But even those not-so-pretty views don't put a damper on how beautiful it is. 

There are many more pictures than there are words, so take a look here (unless we're friends on Facebook and you've seen them there) to see the rest of our walk through the Hoge Fronten:

https://goo.gl/photos/msmw44PgT4kdio3X6

A Rainy Day in Belgium

After a month and a half of living in Europe, we finally left the Netherlands for another country: Belgium. The train tickets are so inexpensive that we decided to go for one day, and if we really thought we needed to see more, we would just train back again the next day. A hotel would have been at least 6 times as much as two round trip tickets- insane!!

I have no idea why the train is so expensive within the Netherlands but going to Belgium is so cheap. Hopefully I discover some cheap Netherlands train secrets at some point.

The train was not only super affordable, but because we only went as far as Liege, it was also really quick. One way was about 50 minutes, and that included a transfer. 

Once we arrived we set out to find a couple of museums we'd planned to see. We first wanted to find the river, since knowing where that is helps a lot with navigating the narrow, European streets. We passed by the beautiful and expansive Palais Provincial which overlooks the giant square at Place St. Lambert. 

After finding the river, which is the same river that flows through Maastricht by the way, we set out to find the Musee des Beaux-Arts. Somehow, we completely failed to find it. We saw it on the map, we walked around the block it was supposed to be on, and we didn't see it. Now, having looked at the satellite view on Google maps, it looks like it's inside a building complex we walked past that did not have any signs about a museum. Oh well, next time. 

We wandered around the area we thought the museum would be in, and saw some very pretty buildings. We also stumbled upon a couple of archways that looked interesting, and they were. The first one led up a very small but beautiful alleyway that opened into a small but beautiful courtyard. 

The second one opened onto a larger courtyard but still pretty. 

After that we stumbled upon yet another pretty square and voila! Right in front of us was the other museum we planned to see: Le Grand Curtius. Wonderful, we found one! 

This museum is located in a mansion (that really interesting red building) built sometime around 1600. We started out with the antiquities exhibit which then led into what must be a less-renovated part of the mansion, which was very, very pretty. I think I enjoyed just being in this part of the mansion more than any of the exhibits (but that's not to say the exhibits weren't great, they were. I'm just totally in love with beautiful, old buildings). 

After we finished at the Grand Curtius, we stopped to eat our packed lunch (hooray frugality!). Unfortunately, it had started raining so our plan to find somewhere nice outside to sit wasn't looking good. We did find some covered benches in front of a very plain square, but it had a nice view of the mountain - which, I think is similar to the Hamilton mountain in that it's actually an escarpment, but we'll still call it a mountain. As we ate I thought, "I wonder what it's like at the top, too bad it's too far to walk"...

Well, we decided to have a walk up the wooden foot bridge at the base of the mountain because it seemed neat. That led to a very pretty cobblestone path, which just kept going up, and so did we. 

Eventually it was clear that we were going to follow this cobblestone path all the way to the top. It's a very gradual incline, and the fairly mild exercise was a great way to get warm out in the cold, rainy weather. By the time we reached the top I was nice and toasty. 

Having done no research into what was on top of this mountain, we were pleasantly surprised to find the remains of an old Citadel. The remaining Southern walls are part of a rebuild from 1684. Apparently, they destroyed most of what was left of the Citadel in the 1970's when they built the hospital that currently sits on the site- I will never understand how anyone can choose to destroy a part of history like that, but I guess they did. Nevertheless, the remaining walls are very pretty. 

We also ended up with a great view down onto the city, and the sheep on a hill that I was very excited to spot when we had been at the bottom. 

We walked along the edge and came upon the streets of town. 

Turns out there's a route through the streets that also leads up to the top - the Montagne de Bueren. Now that I've looked into it a bit, this seems to be the popular way to go up, apparently it's somewhat of a tourist attraction. After finding things like this out, I sometimes feel like we should do more research when going on a trip, but the truth is that our cobblestone path through the woods was gorgeous and I would rather have done it that way anyway. 

After completing our goal of buying Belgian chocolate for Valentine's day, and then buying some macarons because they looked amazing, we found a place to have dinner. The service was TERRIBLE, but the food was great. Turns out that large meatballs are a typical Belgian food, so we both got that for dinner and they were very yummy. 

We meant to get waffles after dinner, but the place we chose to go (on our way back to the train station) was closed. For some reason, like Maastricht, stores close by 6 or 7 pm in the evening even on Saturdays. Oh well, the waffles here in Maastricht are delicious. 

While we waited for our train I got some nice night pictures, including another view of the beautiful Palais Provincial. 

And on our stop-over at Liege-Guillemins station, I got some good photos of the modern architecture. 

So even though it was -3 degrees Celcius (which is cold for here and sure felt cold) and rainy most of the day, it was a good first trip out of the Netherlands and a great way to spend the day before Valentine's day together. 

We didn't got back the next day because it was also a cold, rainy day. But I think we should go back at some point, since we only saw a very small part of Liege. 

Many more photos from our trip can be found here:

https://goo.gl/photos/HXvpst1ZsYvxPy4p6

Maastricht Carnaval 2016!

It's Wednesday, February 10th and, for the first time in 3 days, the streets aren't full of people in amazing costumes singing, dancing and drinking.

Whenever we were in the city center, most streets had some sort of drum or brass band playing. The squares had big groups with their homemade themed carts playing music and dancing, and there was a parade every day.

I think, officially, Carnaval started on Sunday the 7th but we were told that people actually started celebrating Friday night - and yes, that means they party from Friday to Tuesday. We took a walk around on Saturday night to see, and there were already bands and people out in their costumes.

From what I can tell, as a total outsider, the next three days were all about dressing up, drinking, dancing and singing in the streets. It was a really unique thing, especially with all the costumes. Everywhere you went there was someone dressed up like something (including us!). It was really fun.

   

We went to the first parade on Sunday. It started near the station and went into the Vrijthof square but we just picked a spot near the station and watched for a while. Have I mentioned how amazing the costumes were? Obviously those were my favourite part. I have tons of pictures, but here are a couple. There's a link at the bottom of this post to see more (for those who don't use Facebook).

I cannot get over those wings! They were definitely the best we saw. 

The colours and makeup on these guys is very representative of the majority of the costumes we saw.








This drumming group was fantastic! They sounded incredible and their costumes were ridiculously awesome.








We didn't venture out the first night, but the next day we headed out to see what the city center was like during the day. It was definitely a lot emptier than I expected, but it was also around 4pm so that's not too surprising.

There were still large groups and their instruments everywhere. 

And we also wanted to see 't Mooswief (the vegetable wife). She's a giant doll that gets hoisted on a pole in the Vrijthof to mark that it's Carnaval time.

This is my very limited knowledge about what she represents and why she's a Carnaval figure (it was difficult to find any information online in English, and Google translate can only help so much):

't Mooswief is a representation of the women who used to sell at the Maastricht markets, selling their vegetables once a week, around 80 years ago.

As for why she's a Carnaval figure, I'm a bit confused. I was under the impression that Carnaval had something to do with Lent - party hard before you give up whatever you're going to give up - but I also read that it's about celebrating the lengthening of the days and the ability to grow and harvest crops again.

This second reason explains 't Mooswief as a symbol of fertility and the fruit of the land. My knowledge comes from the Google translation of this website: http://www.mestreechtersteerke.nl/pagmooswief.htm

Either way, she presides over the square and as long as she's up people are supposed to be in their costumes and partying. And they were!

We ventured out into the square that night as well, to see what it's like during actual party hours, and it was definitely more of a party.

Yesterday we mostly abandoned Carnaval. It was cold and it rained all day. But we both wanted to see 't Mooswief come down; at 11:55pm on the last day of Carnaval she is lowered down and that marks the end.

There were some mini-fireworks which surrounded her in a red haze and then she was lowered down.

                 

Apparently it's hugely emotional and people cry. We did actually see one person cry, but otherwise it seemed like people were still partying.

I think we definitely lost out on a lot of the emotion and tradition of Carnaval, not having grown up with it, but it was still a really unique experience.

More photos here:

https://goo.gl/photos/ErQaghN6oXpUp99z7

To the countryside!

Finally, after a week of grey skies, wind, and rain, the forecast said that today wouldn't rain. And, very contrary to Canada, the weather forecasts here are usually quite accurate. So we decided to head out on our bikes. 

The plan was to head South and, who knows, maybe we'd make it to Belgium; the route we decided on would actually meet up with the Belgian border if we went far enough. And, really, "far" here does mean something completely different than it does in Canada. 

We essentially took the same road the whole way, it just changes names a LOT. 

We headed South starting on Wilhelminasingel, which then turns into Avenue Ceramique and then turns into Limburglaan (all within about a ten minute bike ride). This takes you to Michel's part of the university, and that little spot I ended up in on my last bike ride (the Kleine Weerd). 

We continued on a path that follows Limburglaan, but it's just a bit closer to the water, called Laag Weerd. This path eventually ends and you have to go back up to the street, which is still the same one but now called Hoge Weerd. At this point, you're now in the Heugem neighbourhood and just about to the Maastricht Marina. From here we could see that there was something pretty up on a hill on the other side of the river (just past something ugly and industrial). We now know that this pretty thing is Lichtenberg Castle and it's definitely something we're going to have to go see. I found the best information (in English) about it here http://www.castles.nl/lichtenberg-castle.

We continued on and the street eventually turned into Oosterweg, at which point I would consider us to be in the "country"- lots of green fields instead of gorgeous old buildings set closely together. 

We ended up in the small town of Oost-Maarland and here the bike lanes run parallel to, but are further from, the road which has changed names again to Catharinastraat and then very quickly becomes Kloppenbergweg. We took a detour down Kasteellaan because, as you ride past it, you see this and why wouldn't you want to ride down it? 

It's not very long, and ends just after a small marina. At the end, you're faced with very pretty farmer's fields and a walking path. I have many regrets that I didn't wear my rain boots, because Michel wore his big boots and if I had, we could have explored this pretty little area more. But, I didn't so we saw as much as we could without walking in the muck. There were horses and then a small pond, and just generally attractive country landscape. 

 

And, as we watched the many ducks in the pond (this is all sounding so picturesque isn't it?) the sun actually came out! 

The wind, however, did not die down. But I think it looked good whipping my hair into Michel's face. 

We headed back up the pretty Kasteellaan and thought we'd head into town. But we didn't get very far before we decided it was very residential and we were hungry and wanted somewhere to sit and eat the snacks we brought with us. So we thought we'd head back North, and maybe that would lead to more of a "downtown" where we could find a bench or something. But we didn't find that. We ended up on a bench just outside the Camping de Oosterdriessen (campground). We had a nice view of some tree-covered hills which we haven't seen much of so far. 

                 

After our snack, we headed back South 

on the bike lanes, and got to just inside 

the town limits of Eijsden, just before 

another street name change (to Emmastraat), before deciding to head back. 

My legs are very, very weak and the 

wind was very, very strong, which is 

really hard to ride against. It's a shame 

that these two things combined today, 

because when we looked at the map after 

we got home, we realized how close we 

actually were to the Belgian border.

It would probably only be 15-30 minutes 

more and we'd be just outside the Belgian 

town of Moelingen. Not sure if there's 

anything to see there, but it still would 

be nice to literally bike ride to Belgium. 

Once I get stronger legs, we'll do this trip 

again and we'll go all the way to Belgium! 

I'm pretty sure if we headed through the city center and continued West, it would be a much shorter ride to Belgium, but riding through the city center doesn't seem like fun so we'll do that later, when we're more confident. 

Now we're resting up for our next adventure: Carnaval! 

The calm before the Carnaval

It's been a fairly "normal" couple of weeks, and by normal I mean Michel and I haven't really gone anywhere or seen anything, we've mostly just hung out in the apartment. Partly that's because I'm pretty sure I sprained my toe two weeks ago, and partly the weather has been not great. 

I won't say it's been "bad" weather, because we're from Canada and they've been getting tons of snow and really cold temperatures. But, it's still been really wet and windy here, and we didn't have any motivation to get out in that, especially with me complaining about my sore toe on top of it all. 

I did get a bike finally though, it was not easy finding a Lisa-sized (AKA teeny tiny) one. I haven't ridden it much but at least I have it. 

I'm still intimidated by the number of people on bikes, I'm not really a good enough rider to stay in my own space, but I'm hoping to get more confident and ride more places. Mostly I really want it for getting further from the apartment and seeing things that just aren't within walking distance (like Belgium!) 

I did go on a short bike ride today though, it was finally sunny and I felt bold. I chose a route that had bike lanes the whole way and stumbled on a cool little trail around some water. It's called Kleine Weerd and is the remnant of an island (according to the Google translated website I read). Glad I went out, but it got grey and cold very quickly so I took some pictures and came back home. 

 

Other than that, we also took care of some more bureaucratic stuff (bank accounts, insurance, residence permits), all very boring. 

BUT this coming weekend (Sunday February7th -Tuesday February 9th actually) is Carnaval here in the Netherlands and there's no way it's going to be "normal", from what I can tell. Apparently it's a Southern Netherlands tradition, and Maastricht does it biggest. Basically, it's their Mardi Gras, but it's colder so the costumes are bigger - at least that's what I'm expecting. 

So, I know it doesn't seem like our thing - a three day party in the streets - because everyone who knows us knows that we're really both 80 inside, but we must embrace it! Also, there's dressing up in a costume and I LOVE dressing up! Because we're being frugal, and I love to crochet, I have made us things to wear. So, I guess it's a good thing we haven't been getting out too much, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to finish my Carnaval projects. Especially Michel's, it was SUCH a pain to make, but ultimately worth it. 

Because I'm just way too excited about the costumes, I'll show you what I've made, even though they're going to look way more awesome when we're actually dressed up in them, But don't worry, there will be LOTS of pictures of that too :) 

I decided, based on the meager clothing I was able to bring with me, that I have a dress that will work to do a female mad hatter type thing. To go with it, I made myself a top hat and giant bow scarf, as well as some leg warmers that aren't done yet. And I bought a frilly coat, since it's February and I didn't want to go for the Canadian child Halloween look of wearing the costume over the snow suit. 

                 

 

Michel chose a hat from my ravelry (knitting and crochet website) library that is just so perfect for him, and also requested a bow tie to match my giant bow. 

 

Again, that hat was NOT fun to make, but good for Michel for pushing me to make something so challenging. 

I can't wait to get all dressed up and experience the Dutch Carnaval!!