Hello!!! Today I went to Maastricht! We left this morning on bike, then we went on the train. One and a half hour later we arrived in Maastricht. Before getting in the city-centre we had to walk for about 15 minutes, we went over the Maas, the river Maastricht was named after. First we went to the VVV/Tourist Information, because Marjolein wanted to buy some cards for Postcrossing. There I found a brochure about the Museum of Natural History Maastricht were they now have a dinosaur that came out China! I really wanted to see that of course! But first we walked around a bit and firstly we found the Market, called Markt in Dutch. I went on photo with the cityhall as you can see. Then we went to a bookstore that is located in a church! I was really beautiful inside but unfortunaly Marjolein wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. On the picture you see Selexyz, that's a store you can find in almost all the city's of the Netherlands, also in Den Bosch. But there the store isn't in a church of course! Well, after this of course we wanted to eat something. So we ate something really from Limburg! It's pie (in the Netherlands pie is called 'taart') but called vlaai. You can only find this 'vlaai' in Limburg. I got me a strawberryvlaai, it was really good with fresh strawberries! We got up and did some more walking. We went to the very heart of the citu, called Vrijthof, this is also a market. On the Vrijthof you find the Sint Janschurch. You see me in front of the church. On this market there was some really strange art and of course I also wanted to have my picture taken with it :-) And then it was time to go to the museum! It was really interesting, with dinosaurs that were found in Limburg. You could see what Limburg and Maastricht looked liked millions of years ago. There where fossiels and stones and stuffed animals, which I found a bit eery. But interesting. They also had a garden with herbs in it and as the name Marjolein is from a herb Marjolein went to find her herb. And she found it! The rest of the dinosaurs where located somewhere else in Maastricht in a place called Centre Céramique. We could just follow the dinosaursfeet to this other building. We went over a very modern bridge called The High Bridge (de Hoge Brug) and after this in a very modern part of Maastricht, on a market called Market 1992 (Plein 1992). The dinosaur was a really big and I was a bit scared! But I dared to go on picture with him. What I found really interesting, was that the head of the dino was really small! Very weird! The rest of the show was also interesting, with lots of dinosaurs from China. We did some shopping after being really educative. Kasper bought a poster of New York and Marjolein bought a present for her best friend Dieuwerke who is visiting tomorrow! She's been in Romania for three months for school so Marjolein bought Dutch candy from the real Dutch shop called Hema which were made for the 'Rijksmuseum' in Amsterdam. Then it was time to eat again! We went to a pizzeria on the Vrijthof. Marjolein ate a very nice pizza with spinach, mushrooms, bacon and egg. Kasper ate a pizza with tuna, as usual, as Marjolein told her. After diner we went back to Den Bosch by train. We had a very nice day and tomorrow I will go with Marjolein to her school in Zwolle and after that her best friend Dieuwerke and her boyfriend will be visiting and we will eat pancakes and party of course :-)
Much season greetings from Nick!!