Google Map of Day 1 Route: Click Me!With everything that has gone on the past few weeks, Dawn and I decided to take a bit of a break and to head somewhere where we had never been. Since the weather was looking really good, we decided to pack up our camping gear and head for Holland. We figured we'd do it like a road trip in the US - drive until we were tired and then either find a cheap hotel along the highway or find a secluded road to go down and make camp for the night. BZZZZZ - WRONG!!!
I've known for sometime that Europe isn't the United States. Heck, I've even got this cool piece of paper that says I have an MS in Geosciences so of course I know this. Well, I guess I skipped the day we discussed driving holidays across western Euroland in Geo 301 because I realllllly calculated this trip wrong!
Our goal for the first night was to make it to the coast where some beachfront campsites (so said the internets) existed. Um, yeah. We barely made it in to Holland let alone the beach, but we did make it! Woohoo! New country! Now we just needed a place to crash for the night. We first checked a city named Heerlen for hotel rooms only to learn it was an industrial city and tourists generally didn't go there. We then drove to Maastricht which I had actually heard of and had no luck finding anywhere to stay. It did look like a cool place to check out, however. We then drove to Valkenburg, a place that was more touristy and had plenty of hotels for people like us - so said the 30 year old pasty, chain-smoking lard-butt who worked as a busboy at some place in Heerlen and took exception to our living in Germany. Some people just can't let go.....
Anyway, we did end up finding a place to stay in Valkenburg quite easily, even though it was nearly midnight. The room was simple but was clean and had a bed. This was good as Dawn and I were quite tired and Osu was looking pretty drowsy as well. But, instead of going straight to bed, we all decided to take a walk and check out the old part of town. We'd been sitting in a car for nearly 7 hours so we did need to stretch our legs a bit. The walk was nice, the town was fairly dead but bed and sleep were sounding better and better with each step we took.We did make it back to the room only to find out that the heat the proprietor of the hotel had recently turned on did not in fact 'heat the room in 5 minutes' as he claimed. The heater, in fact, wouldn't melt an ice cube placed directly on it - even after 3 hours of verbal motivation from Tony Robbins (melt! think positive! melt I say! melt!) . I was so tired that I really didn't care and found what little warmth I could in my portion of the bed. Dawn, a person who could be cold in Death Valley at high noon in August, struggled all night against the cold. Osu, well, he has fur. He was fine. Thanks for asking.
We awoke the next morning to another gorgeous day and took another walk around the city before the sun was even up. Valkenburg is a very nice town and it was fun checking it out. Of course, we never were there when anything was open, but it still was nice during the quiet hours too. After our walk, we went back and had breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast was included with the room and was actually not too bad. I could only eat the eggs and some cheese and yogurt (dang jaw) but it was enough to get us going for the day. We were going to need the energy considering what we were about to experience.......
Stay tuned for Day 2 - coming whenever I feel like writing about it!
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