Maastricht :)

This place was breathtakingly beautiful! Maastricht is in Limburg,  the southern Province of the Netherlands and surrounded on three sides by Germany. Its for this reason that the architecture, dialect and culture is so different from anywhere else in the country.

This place really is the city of churches! Thats all we did, walk around and admire the churches, not really of course but everytime i look through my photos i spot a different church, a different steeple! it was amazing! My favourite church was the Onzelievevrouw, Its a huge church suspected to have been built over roman ruins. The church itself is magnificaent and inside is a shrine to Mary, Star of the Sea. I am told that pilgrims have been coming for three hundred years to offer prayer before her- i dont doubt it either as there was huge cues and people clawing to get a view of the shrine. Unfortunately the Treasury which is housed just off this church was closed for the christmas period, instead they had a wonderful interactive nativity scene :)
This church was filled with secret passageways and one of the prettiest organs ive ever seen, the inner courtyard was also quite magnificent in the snow :)

The little alcove that this church is housed within is also an incredibly popular cafe spot, It was all lit up with christmas carollers and people laughing and enjoying a coffee/ lunch/ dinner/ each others company. It really was a nice atmosphere :)

The city itself was bustling, People rushing from store to store. People who couldnt possible carry and more shopping bags filled with expensive purchases. People eating, People with maps infront of their noses. People who annoying walked on the wrong side of the footpath or walked really slowly. It was so refreshing having so many people around! stavoren in the winter time is not so big on hoards haha.
Some other amazing things i discovered about churches includes:
A Red Church tower. Its been said that the church was painted in Ox blood for protection... however wikipedia says... everything in Nederlands so. im just going to go with the hearsay on this one.
Next we found the church that housed a bookstore.... OH MY LORD! THIS IS HEAVEN ON EARTH! the slogan was (roughly translated) browse in a serene/magestic surrounding.

 Good gosh i love europe haha! Maastricht was even more beautiful lit up at night. It was so lovely walking through the city at night, it was for the most part deserted on a wednesday night. And it was impossible to find the local grocery store haha. Much to my shame Mike and I... ok so only I stuffed myself sensless with steak and salad at lunchtime and so for dinner we contented ourselves to snacking for dinner back at the hotel room and eating 'Fly' (or so it sounded when my host father was telling me to go to the Vlaai Bakker. AKA Pie bakery in English haha)

The second day in Maastricht was spent shopping, doing another city walk, walking through the christmas markets and watching a music man play his giant music box. Being so full from the Vlaai's and the steak and munchies were stumbled onto the train, watched kungfu panda and reminisced about all the amazing things we saw :) Next time were going to go back to a huge underground limestone cave system. Hopefully then ill be able to understand the guided tour (even though the Limburg'ians' pronounce everything with a soft ggheee instead of the khhuuuuuuugh sound making it impossible to understand them haha)
This whole dialect thing gets quite frustrating sometimes. Im now at the point where i dont even try to speak nederlands in some parts of the country, its quite ridiculous that they call a bird three different names within a 100 km radius. SO MUCH TO LEARN. so little care factor haha