rich_jacko

Sorry it's taken me nearly a week to get around to writing this up. It's partly that I've been really busy since I came back, what with work, two trips to the cinema (more on the latter in my next post), helping the Chivers decorate their Christmas tree, Lard Club Christmas at Pepe's, Chinese food, and my work Christmas do at Pasta Bar, followed by a pub crawl up Ecclesall Road. It's also partly my reluctance to grapple with LJ's annoying new(ish) photo upload system. (Who'd have thought something on LJ would be less intuitive and easy to use than it's Facebook equivalent?)

Anywaaaay, here's what we got up to on holiday:

WEDNESDAY: The journey out. Went largely without incident, apart from vomiting Belgians and a stinky bug. Settled into our apartment. E&K went shopping for pizza and 47c beer while I wrangled the kids. Sinterklaas visited in the night and left presents by shoes.

THURSDAY: First full day in Maastricht. Gloriously sunny but bitterly cold. We went round the Basilica, the Treasury of which was stuffed with reliquaries and other shinies - not for the last time, we decided that

edy_ would've really enjoyed this trip. We wandered through the Christmas markets on the Vjrithof (the main square in front of the Basilica). The setting was stunning, but the markets themselves were rather average. This was fine - Valkenburg's were the markets we really came to see. We stopped off in a nearby cafe for lunch - epic sandwiches and winter beer. The courtyard out back had been glazed over, making a nice space to sit and eat. We resumed wandering the city in the afternoon,

soul_rider acting as tour guide, taking in the enormous square with the town hall on, as well as the city walls, before going back to the apartment for Chinese food. Well, it was Thursday. ;o)

FRIDAY: Snow! And lots of it! It fell in the night, and kept coming down. We braced ourselves against the wind and headed down the riverside. The goblin and I went ahead and may have had a snowball fight or two while waiting for the others to catch up. But we also had a chat about red giant stars, the ageing process and bridge engineering, so it wasn't all silliness! We explored the rocket-shaped Bonnefantenmuseum. As is always the case with these things, the medieval and Renaissance exhibits took a lot longer than the modern art, but not all the modern art was bad. We met up with 's friend Nico for lunch, plus coffee and cake. Then we wandered round the university area and wound our way back the the Vjrithof for gluwein (in last year's mugs!) before returning to the apartment.

SATURDAY: A short hop on the train for a long day in Valkenburg, which is a very pretty little town (though also very touristy).

longhairedhippy, the goblin and I were in full, snap-happy, Japanese tourist mode the whole day. I was puzzled by these strange inclines in the landscape - it didn't seem to all be flat for some reason. We went round the castle, then braved the epic queues for the Christmas markets. In caves! Actually the queues weren't too bad, and once we were underground things kept moving and it wasn't too crowded. We managed not to buy a great deal, but soaked up the atmosphere and admired the paintings on the cave walls. The markets were big and took a fair while to get round, but we found time to explore the town as well, and stop off for lunch (and more cake). We stayed until the evening and caught the Christmas parade - half an hour of floats, music and dancers - which the goblin loved.

SUNDAY: A leisurely start. We packed up, met up with Nico again (plus her hubby) for a final round of cake (There may have been a theme to this holiday...) before making the journey home. The bug wasn't best pleased about being cooped up, though we took turns letting him have a good run around in Brussels. Even Belgium didn't have any nasty surprises for us this time, and we made it home without incident.

All in all it was a great few days away. It was a shame so many people dropped out of the trip, but it was nice to spend time with the Chivers. The goblin and I got through a few more chapters of Harry Potter and a couple of games of Chrononauts. The bug merrily waved "See you later" to anyone he'd see, and then I taught him jazz hands... We fairly thoroughly explored two beautiful towns, I ticked another country that I've been too. Oh, and we had quite a bit of cake :o)