Maastricht

ANDRE RIEU'S HOUSE!!!!
Emily sitting on a canon in Maastricht
Mum & Emily outside the house where Andre Rieu was born
Cheers from Maastricht.

We spent the day touring Maastricht. The bus was an old American school bus - from Florida. Unfortunately we couldn't see a lot out of the windows (unlike the open top buses everywhere else). The commentary was also not in English - but they did give us a printout to read. This made it hard to read & look at the same time!! Personally I started to feel a little motion sick. The boat ride was good - again no English though. The highlight of the boat tour in Maastricht was a concrete plant!!!!! Unbelievable but true! Another highlight (I guess you could call it that considering there wasn't much to see) was a big boat nearly hitting us. Maastricht has the highest mountain (hill) in the Netherlands - 160m above sea level. The town didn't cater to english speaking tourists - or any tourists really - with no commentary in english & really not many souvenirs to buy at all. Only lots of clogs with Holland printed on them. Lenore we did manage to find something with Maastricht on it for you though! In the afternoon, we wanted to go to some caves which would have been extremely interesting, but when we got there we found out that in the caves the temperature is 9-10 degrees. We would have been in there for an hour & with no warm clothes we would have frozen! The tourist information forgot to tell us that vital bit of information!!
We walked back into town with the intention of getting jackets & going back but it would have taken too long, mum was jiggered & we probably would not have made it back in time anyway. We were very disappointed - oh well, we shopped instead! Looking for souvenirs that didn't exist!

Maastricht was not anything like I imagined Holland to be. No windmills, tulips, etc. The people though, were true to their reputation!! I personally wasn't very impressed by my tiny foray into Holland at all. I can't speak for the others though.