Off to The Netherlands!

Delving into my posh travel memories sketchbook today! Off to the Netherlands! This was only a short trip but it really was lovely. I spent one day freezing in Maastricht. Before I headed off I'd checked my phone and the forecast for our short trip was trocken and relatively warm for mid October, stupidly I decided not to pack a warm jacket and found myself touring Maastricht in a shortsleeved top and thin cardigan at only 3C! 

On the right you can see the tourist information office in the city centre, the old architecture in Maastricht was like stepping into a Vermeer painting. In Maastricht the restaurants were teeming with people at lunchtime and where we were actually staying in Heerlen, I saw loads of lunch restaurants but in the evenings we never found anywhere that was open to eat in, so KFC was on the cards more than once. Trying new foods in a country is one of things I love but I never got to try any of the fabulous battered and fried food that Holland is famed for (epic fail, I didn’t try cheese and I'm a cheese fiend!). One speciality I did try in Maastricht was Vlaai ….. these flan/cakes/ pies are everywhere with millions of different fillings. In my sketch you can see my cherry Vlaai, here in Germany we have similar latticed cakes but what was interesting was the base of the pie …. it was made of a yeasty dough similar to white bread and wasn’t sweet. What was very sweet was the delicious Appel Stroop in the wee glass bottom right. A tart yet sweet apple syrup, actually when I opened the jar I didn’t want to eat it, it was so black it looked like treacle, which I don’t like, I took a big dollop and yum it was fab, like 200 apples in your mouth at once.

Second epic fail, a tulip bulb market just in front of the historical town hall. Hundreds if not thousands of different tulip bulbs, spectacular varieties which I had never seen …. did I buy? Nope, what was I thinking? I love tulips, I think my brain was just numbed from the cold. To warm up, I popped in here, the Dominicanen bookshop, wow I was blown away, this famous bookstore is in a Dominican church from the 13th C and is famed for selling over 20,000 books, CD's, vinyls, you name it, they've got it, and it was warm. 

 The wonderful coloured glass vials are Roman and from the Roman baths Museum in Heerlen, this was a spectacular site to visit, a museum with Roman artefacts and an archaeological dig site at the same time. I did sketch in the museum which was a challenge due to the dimmed lighting and was exciting because I could only see what I'd sketched when I got outside into daylight. 

So off to finish my Netherlands sketches and to reflect on what other epicurean and cultural fails I managed in Holland.