I'm a little behind

In the middle of my "I hate October" hissyfit, I complained to Alberto about the fact that we never do anything cool anymore. That's far from the truth, but when you are in a long distance relationship your money tends to go toward plane tickets, and your organizational skills go to figuring out how to swing two days out of the office so you can see your boyfriend/girlfriend for more than 2 days at a time without falling behind on your work-related responsibilities. Needless to say, a weekend trip to Paris, London, Amsterdam or Rome seems hard to commit to both financially and organizationally at times. 

So, when I whined that we never do anything cool anymore, Alberto suggested Maastricht.

Situated on the Southern point of Holland, Maastricht is wedged right in between Belgium and Germany. I booked us a B&B for one night, and we planned a 24 hour trip for the last weekend in October, when Alberto would be visiting me in Brussels anyway.

It took us less than 2 hours to get there by train from Brussels, and with the 50% discounted weekend fares that Belgium offers, it only cost us something lik 25 Euros roundtrip per person. Not bad...

This is the B&B where we stayed. The ownder didn't speak much English. I had reserved the room online and he sent the directions to find it in Dutch. Thank God for online translators, and my Flemish speaking colleague!

These are shots from in the room. The red heart-shaped pillows are bit kitch, but all in all, it was a nice place. Oh, and the breakfast was awesome!

One thing that really made me happy was the fall weather that we had the day we were there. It was absolutely gorgeous. I stopped complaining immediately about how much I hate fall in Europe.

This statue had a real flame. I'm not sure what that was all about... I should have read the guidebook more thoroughly.

 

Horses!

  The city center was entirely pedestrian and was full of sidewalk cafes and window shoppers. 

But despite all of the cafes, a decent espresso was nowhere to be found, hence Alberto's annoyed face here.

There were all sorts of interesting statues in Maastricht. Exhibit 1.

...and Exhibit 2.

In the evening we found lots of charming little cobbled streets to explore. 

And what would a city in Holland be without a sea of bikes parked at the train station?

We had a great time in Maastricht. Both Alberto and I found the city to be utterly romantic. It had a somewhat posh vibe to it, without making us feel at all out of place. Everything about the city was charming, even the "coffee shop" (it was Holland, after all) seemed high class. Our only gripe was that we went out looking for dinner at 9pm, and almost every restaurant told us they were done serving already. Ooops, we forgot we were in Northern Europe. We ended up at a great Chinese place, and got drunk on Chinese beer, like the classy folk we are.

I just wish I had more pictures. I didn't even take a single picture of the Maes, the river that divides the city center in half! At least I have an excuse to go back...