Day 38: Maastricht
Today was a very relaxed day in Maastricht. We slept in late, toured the city for a little, and then came back to camp to hang out, cook dinner, and go to bed early.
To start with, I find the bike paths in the Netherlands amazing. Besides freeways, I have yet to find a road that wasn't bike friendly. Either with a totally separate bike path, and dedicated bike lane (usually panted red so everyone knows it's a bike lane), or a road so little traffic that it doesn't really matter. It's incredible.
After our typical breakfast of bread, salami, and cheese, we headed off into town to walk around. We just had two long days on the bikes and decided that we'd just take the bus into town. That was a mistake. The bus came every hour and ten minutes, and we had just missed the bus. Okay, we'll do the Dutch thing and bike into town. The bike was, as typical in the Netherlands, very flat, well signed, and on a bike path the entire way. It was also only 5km to the city, so it wasn't a long day at all.
After getting I into Maastricht we found bike parking (see the picture above) and added our bikes to the mass of other bikes parked in the lot. We then walked around the city, not looking for anything in particular.
We came across the tourist office, and Matt looked inside for a bike map. Unfortunately, they stopped giving out bike maps a year or so ago because people were just using google maps instead. This is a little annoying when you have slow data, and have to wait for the phone to load every time, but we can deal with it.
We continued to walk around town, and looked for a place for lunch. We found some nice outdoor seating overlooking the central square, and ordered lunch. We had sandwiches and something that was potatoes, beef, and something else deep fried in bread crumbs. (Like a chicken nugget, but with gravy on the inside. The Dutch word for this was something that started with a k I believe.)
After lunch, we went to a grocery store to pick up food, and then just biked around the city for an hour before returning to camp.
I'm sorry we don't have more pictures, as it's quite a beautiful city. We saw the university district, bridges and churches, and lots and lots of locals on bikes. I now understand the bikes really aren't just a thing in Amsterdam (although they take bikes to another level there) but a thing across the whole country.
After touring Maastricht we came back to the campground to relax and cook dinner. There are a lot of other bike tours here, and we talked with a few other couples touring. One did 150km today, and are significantly older than us, so that made our 160km day feel much less impressive. The wife however was not very happy with the distance.
Tomorrow we leave the Netherlands again, and head back into Belgium. We're headed to Antwerp, were we will stay in the middle of the city, and then to Ghent, where we will see the end of their week long festival. We're looking forward to that. Should be a fun final week of the trip.