Last night...

Tonight was our last night here in Maastricht. It was very sad eating our last meal in the Markt square, but at the same time we know that we'll be coming home to all our families and friends. We're coming back home, and while we know that there will be many stories to tell and pictures to show, it will be impossible to tell everyone every last detail. Fortunately, we will have our memories, which, with the help of this blog, will remind us of this incredible year. Thanks everyone for reading. We'll probably have a Dublin post and a Washington DC post, but this is an official good bye from Maastricht.... For now.....
Chris/Michelle.

And here is a photo of Michelle giving me a ride on her bike after I sold my Gazelle... just so you know we can do it :)

Last weekend

This is our last weekend here in Maastricht, and it is indeed a sad occasion. We are going to miss everyone greatly, and we're going to miss all the beautiful scenery, the bike rides, the beer, the Dutchisms...countless more things.

But to stay on topic, we celebrated this occasion by riding our bikes to a delicious tapas dinner with all of Michelle's co-workers. It was fun, but sad knowing this would be the last night with them. They gave both of us some incredibly kind gifts, and parting words.

Then last night we went to the Peruvement festival in the vrijtof. You buy some tickets, and exchange them for some local food samples or meals which are set up in multiple tents. It's quite fantastic.

Then we went to Fair Play, and I rocked the Roulette wheel, which led to us going out for a celebratory drink at take one. Now it's back to packing :(

Brugge

Michelle's birthday happened again this weekend! Not her actual birthday, but rather her present, as we've become prone to giving each other our presents months after the actual day. This year, it was a trip to Brugge (Bruges) Belgium. For those who haven't been there, it is an amazing town. I'll offer a few descriptions, but mostly words won't do it justice, so I'll post plenty of photos as well :)

We stayed at the bed and breakfast of Maria. She is a local woman, who moved to Italy for 25 years with her husband, and after his death, decided to return to her home town. She is great, and regularly switches between 5 or so different languages on accident while speaking.

We checked out the many sites around the town, and went on some tours. There was the choco-story museum, where we learned about the history of chocolate...

There was our boat ride...


There was also a brewery tour, where they brew the Brugse Zot or the Lunatic of Bruges beer.

And we also climbed up 366 stairs to the top of the town hall's belfry to check out all the sights... really an amazing weekend.

Oh, and we went twice to this restaurant that served 400 Belgian beers... what's crazy is that there are actually over 700 actively brewed beers in Belgium... not bad for a country about the size of South Carolina. :)

Further down the Maas

Michelle and I spent this weekend in Rotterdam and Den Haag, the often forgotten major cities in the Netherlands. Heck, we almost forgot to visit them, until we realized we only have one last "unplanned" weekend left! So we trained it up to Rotterdam on Saturday morning, and saw some of the coolest feats of architecture. Considering how old Amsterdam is, it's easy to forget that most of the new construction in Holland is in Rotterdam, and thus we were quite amazed to see so many new buildings. Rotterdam has in fact taken over Amsterdam as the biggest port in Europe, and if I remember correctly, the world (though I may be mistaken on that last one).


Of course, in true Dutch form, everything had to be extreme, different, and often have a slight dark humor to it. All over the town where the metal statues of naked men. Often they would be standing on the edge of buildings, like they were about to jump off... sometimes they would be on the ground like they just did. There was also this cute, almost mascot of Rotterdam named Fikkie. The plaque next to it basically says that Fikkie found his way all over the town, because people would rob him and move him all over. Now he has a permanent home... and a mess to clean up.




There was also these funky looking cube houses, which are like cubes, but tilted into a diamond shape. They are hard to explain, so here are some photos :) you can buy one for about 219,000 Euro.





For fans of extreme sports, you can repel off the side of this tower in Rotterdam.

Michelle and I opted out.


Apparently we weren't the only people who ever made it to Rotterdam, as we found some famous names in the walk of fame.




The next day, we trained further north to Den Haag... A city you may recognize as the international war crimes tribunal's headquarters. That was cool, and the city looked pretty sweet, but we were more interested in the Scheveningen, a big beach resort town on the edge of Den Haag. It had been a long time since we'd seen a sea, and thus we spent most of the day playing like the many kids we saw in the sand.







Oh, and another extreme sport allowed people to bungee off another tower above the sea... again not really our cup of tea... in fact, it was scary enough walking up the tower, since some of the boards were broken off, and others creaked, and bowed as you stepped on them. According to Michelle, I walked nervously, and hugged the sturdier center area.



So then we headed back home. Good times. Almost over times... I'll leave you with a fun Dutch company to try and pronounce. I know I'm going to miss seeing words with 20 + letters in them! Oh and some cool sand sculptures we saw in both Rotterdam and Den Haag.