On Sunday, Emma and I embarked on the task of cooking a Sunday/Christmas roast. I've never done it before, so stuffing the chicken was a faintly interesting experience and I now have tremendous respect for what Mum does each Sunday! Thankfully the chickens juices ran clear, the Yorkshire pudding's rose, the mash was creamy and the vegetables tender. So that was a success with the only thing missing being Christmas crackers and their party hats.
On Monday we caught the train to Maastricht in the far south east of Holland, sandwiched between Belgium and Germany. I've been before, but only briefly late in the evening on my way back from Luxembourg, so it was good to see it in the daylight:
It really is a nice place, but like a lot of places I've been to, there's nothing really to see or do beyond seeing the city itself. But it's a pretty city with lots of old and quaint passages such that you don't notice they're filled with big name stores. But still, we went for the Christmas market, and it wasn't quite what we were expecting:
It was more of a fair with stalls, but it had an ice-skating rink which provided too good an opportunity to miss, so I donned a pair of skates for the first time in two years and slithered around the rink. Fortunately we had two hours for it all to come back to us and by the end we were more of less skating. But why is that these places are always full of four year old children who can skate perfectly as if they were born doing it? I'm sure I never skated like that when I was younger. Still, we had fun finding time to form a conga line and for me to have an unplanned attempt at doing the splits:
I'm proud to say that the only time I almost fell over was in fact nothing to do with me, rather one of the aforementioned children being slightly less perfect than he thought. The star of the evening award though has to go to Emma who found a stall selling waffles covered in Caramac! It's a long way back to Maastricht, but I think that might just be worth the trip! We stayed in a really nice B&B right in the centre with complimentary DVDs, so I corrected the fact that Laura, Emma, and Rachel had never seen Four Weddings and Funeral.
On Tuesday we made the short train ride to Valkenburg and here things were slightly different. Valkenburg's markets are actually underground in cave networks and are hence quite famous:
The amount of English people there should not therefore have come as a surprise, but still, it did. Among the priceless tidbits of conversation I picked up were "I've got stitches in me teeth" said to a sweet stall owner, "My hands are all sticky" said to God-knows who, and the rather abrupt "Fish?" said to a bemused restaurant owner. Ah, makes me proud to be English. We spent most of the afternoon exploring the labyrinth of passages and stalls, but shamefully I only bought three things, and all for myself. My excuse being that I've still a month until Christmas, and a trips to Paris and Cologne in which to buy things, so I didn't want to splurge just yet.
So a really fun two days, and it's only a week until the Dutch celebrate Christmas, and under a month until the English do. It was a really good way to spend some time with Emma and Laura before they leave for England tomorrow as well. It's been a fantastic three months and their potential room-replacements have an awful lot to live up to.
Still, we didn't feel as if we could leave it at that, today, Javi, Amadeo, Rita and myself decided to make a farewell lunch for the two of them. With Javi and Amadeo on savoury and Rita and I on sweet we ended up with quite a menu consisting of:
Spanish Tortilla, Roquefort Pasta, Pastel de Carne (Meet Cake), Vanilla Cupcakes, Chocolate Mousse, Meringues and a Cheesecake
Everything went down very well indeed and it was nice to have a good turn out for the sending off. We're going out for pancakes this evening as well, but after such a big lunch, I think everyone will be reaching for the children's menu!
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