Maastricht and Gorinchem

The drive to this town was simple, but getting to a parking spot proved to be difficult. Much to Julie’s dismay (she thought the area looked sketchy); we parked under a highway overpass, along with many other cars. The town of Maastricht is famous for its thermal springs, just like Aachen is; it’s also famous for its man made caves, which sounded a lot like Luxembourg’s casements. Julie also points out that there aren’t many differences between Europe and Canada. The “similarity” is annoying to Julie and at times makes her wish to not visit some towns or cities. This was the case for Maastricht, when we arrived, it looked like Toronto and made Julie not wish to head into town to explore, it took much convincing on my part to at least head to the tourist office. It’s simple to please me; whenever we head into town I enjoy seeing different buildings, the markets, the people and any visits to the many patios. The “similarity” to Luxembourg City is also why we opted out of visiting the cave system, which were made by the Romans as well (we came to Maastrict for the caves), Julie and I did take a walk around in the huge town square though. The town square was buzzing with people shopping, eating, drinking and just wandering around. We walked into a concert of sorts and left because the music being sung was for people in retirement homes (you could tell by the audience and the choir of people in their 70-80’s). It wasn’t long afterwards that we made our way back to the car and decided to almost complete our drive back to Amsterdam. The drive was about 4 hours due to us not using the highways, but we passed through many small towns and even took 2 ferries. The stellplatz in Gorinchem we stayed at only ever has two spots available, and it looked like both were in use, so we parked in front of them and hoped for the best.