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!