What a Freak!!

Say it aint so.... So we are at dinner in Maastricht on Saturday evening (August the 3rd that is) pondering the kids portion of the menu. As I look to the waiter to confirm the obvious, I'm clearly noted that my assumption is wrong. More on that later...

In an attempt to check off yet another fantastic city that we haven't yet visited on our 2 year Euro tour, we decided to head down to Maastricht for a weekend trip. To our luck, we were able to not only visit Maastricht, but also Vaals and Valkenburg in and out of town.

Arriving to just about the most south eastern part of Holland around 11 am on a sunny Saturday morning, we were pleasantly surprised that the BMW navigation system was leading us through the hills of Holland. Yes, hills! A key enabler of all of the bikes in Holland is the lack of any inclines, anywhere! To be driving through some hills and all of a sudden get slapped in the face with a view was quite a nice treat. The reason we were driving up here was to visit Vaals which is a town in Holland that borders Germany & Belgium and has a point that you can physically walk around all three borders.

After enjoying a light lunch and some playground time in Vaals, we headed into Maastricht to check into our hotel and visit the city that so many had told us we would enjoy. We dropped our bags and loaded the double stroller up for a cruise around the most posh town in Holland. The architecture was great and the stores were all nice, but the most pleasant surprise of all....they had a burrito joint. Though we didn't get a chance to dive into a local carne asada super burrito this time due to lack of seating, we left it as a great excuse to come back.

Knowing that a burrito would kill any chance of dinner, we headed back to the hotel to snack on some apple slices and sip some wine. When everyone was done relaxing, it was time to go find a restaurant. The only difficult decision was which of the many outdoor cafes to eat at, though we fought through it and settled on one in the town square. A few minutes into the menu research, we decided to ask the waiter a few questions.

A slight inquiry to confirm that the menu item "Frikhandel" was the Dutch version of a hot dog was unfortunately not confirmed. This raisin skinned, hot dog shaped, piece of mince meat that we had fed to our children several times in the past, turned out to be slightly different than a good ole American dog. The waiter said that the "Frikhandel" was actually deep fried minced horse meat, ewe! Needless to say, we ordered the chicken for the boys and have since steered clear of the ground up Mr. Ed.

One of the nicest parts of the trip had to be the leisurely stroll back to the hotel from the center of town. The streets were quiet and lit up nicely and the moon was shining brightly off of the river running through town.

The next morning, we got up and enjoyed a lazy walk around Maastricht before checking out. On our way home, we stopped in the town of Valkenburg in the hills not too far outside of Maastricht. There are caves here in the hills that you can hike, bike, ATV or train through. We opted for the train tour from which we got to view some very cool wall paintings and carvings dating back many hundreds of years.