Cycling in the Countryside

This morning, I had brunch at the hotel, read some history, and took care of some email. My father got out of his meetings at around one, so we went to the old city to rent bikes for the afternoon. We had planned to take the path by the river south to the next town, Eijsden. But even though we had started quite late—a little after two—we were pleased to find that we had quite a lot of time before we had to return the bicycles at six.

Maastricht is built to be extremely accommodating to cyclists—there is a clearly defined lane in a different color of asphalt and no one wears helmets. As we were cycling south, we saw on the horizon a very pretty church tower and an interesting suspension bridge.

We wanted to check it out but it appeared to be across a river. It was actually west of the Maas. I suspect it may have been the Jerker River. There was a very cute ferry that took people across from Eijsden for one Euro.

My father and I on the ferry to Lanaye

After the five minute ride across, we noticed that the signs had switched to French and Belgian flags were flying. We had completely unwittingly crossed an international boundary. The casualness of borders within the EU is really striking. At a stand where we bought juice, the woman did not speak a word of English. The Dutch speak it quite perfectly and without any hesitation or (apparent) irritation. But it seems that the francophone people are much less interested in accommodating American interlopers.

The Belgian town across the river from Eijsden, we discovered, was called Lanaye. The suspension bridge was at a spot called Pont de Lanaye.

On the bridge at Pont de Lanaye

Barges at Pont de Lanaye

We had time to return up to Maastricht and cycle around to the deer park in the city before returning the bikes.

We ventured to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. I was curious to see how Americans and the Dutch differed in their interpretations. What’s outstanding here, I have found, is the quality of the meat. It’s great.

My father’s in meetings all day tomorrow. I plan to try to write some postcards and catch up more on my reading. I might also wander a bit in the northeast area of Maastricht, which I haven’t really checked out very thoroughly yet.

My father presents his paper on Saturday, so I’m very excited to go and see how he does and see the response. We leave first thing in the morning on Sunday. The flight from Amsterdam to London leaves at around 11AM, so it would probably be prudent to be out of the hotel by six.

Also, my column on the Punchbowl website runs every other Thursday, including this week. Two weeks ago, I wrote on my academic interests in history. You can check them out at http://www.thepunchbowl.net, and it is also linked to the right.