Maastricht

Well last week was just another normal busy week, but I like those kind of weeks. On Saturday my friends and I went to Maastricht. I had to get up at 8 in the morning on a weekend. The only exception to waking up that early in the morning on the weekend, is going to a place like Maastricht. We litterally spent almost the entire day there. From 10 am to 5 pm we were in Maastricht. My friend told me that even in that amount of time we did not get to see everything. Maastricht has about 125,000 people. Talk about European cities being compact, we were able to walk from one end of the city to the other end in 15 minutes. It takes 15 minutes by bus to get to my school in Arizona, and here, if you walk for 15 minutes you could even end up in Germany. Anyway, Maastricht is probably one of the most beautiful cities I have seen so far in Europe. Part of the city is modern, and the other part still has it's early century look to it. We did so much on Saturday that I don't even know if a book would cover anything. At about 11:30 we went to a bakery and bought a few things. I got a brownie and a chocolate croissant (I hope I spelled that right, but I doubt it). My goodness, it was some of the best food I have ever had. In the Netherlands most of the people buy their food at the bakery, (not all of it, just bread and pie and that kind of stuff) so it is always fresh. Maybe that is why everything is so good. I am lucky that I have to ride a bike almost everywhere, because if I didn't have to, I probably would have easily put on 15 pounds by now. After the bakery we walked around a bit more, and went to a book store. Books here are quite expensive. The cheapest I saw was 10 euro and that was for a book with like 100 pages in it. After that, we went to go get some fries. My friend recommended we go to this place so we did. The fries were so good I almost had to go back for seconds but the portion they give you here is huge. Then we went to go get some ice cream. Me being me I decided to order a chocolate milkshake. Once again, it was great. I think I need to cut back on this love of food and start talking about some other stuff. Like I said, Maastricht is beautiful. The architecture there is absolutely incredible. No matter what kind of architecture, old to modern it was all amazing. Parts of Maastricht is seperated by the Maas (a river). I know there is some history to it but I can't remember. Saturday was an awesome day to say the least and I am glad to have the friends that I do. Sunday was another great day. It started off with going to Church. I am not sure what the mass was about because it was in Dutch. All I know is that the Priest blessed some animals on Sunday celebrating St. Hubert who was the Saint of the hunt. I thought it was pretty neat to experience considering I have never heard of something like that. The evening was also great. My host family and I went to a Greek restaraunt and the food was awesome. I personally have never had actual Greek food so it was an experience and my taste buds and I will probably never forget it. The dinner was also nice because the whole family was there and it is always nice to just sit down and chat with the awesome host family that I have been given. Well, I might not update for a few weeks because my host family is taking me on vacation next week, but when I get back I will inform everyone how it went.