The Boat and Bike Tour Begins!

We got off the train from Siegen and found a rather majestic train station in Maastricht. It had some very ornate stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings. We looked around and after a short wait, we saw Peter and Amanda coming in from the tracks!

Ah, now we can both be in the pictures! Thanks, Amanda!
Holland is a very bike friendly country. Most people ride bikes all their lives. Here you see the 'park 'n ride' outside the train station.
Our captain came and picked us up at the train station and took us to the boat. I think I will have a picture of the boat itself in another batch. There were seven of us on the boat for our tour, we four Americans and three Europeans, a Dutch couple, Marion and Yap,  and a Flemish lady, Bea (Bay-ah). The Dutch couple were retired, the lady as old as my Mom and the man older than my Dad. Bea was in her forties, but had had a double radical mastectomy, chemo and radiation. Three years before she had been given three years to live. She was a retired post-mistress and an artist, and a very nice lady. Her bike was electric and boosted her efforts by 65%, otherwise she could not have done it.
Our bike tour was to begin up river, so we set off right away for Liege. We passed through many locks, and here is one as we entered it.
If the lock is big, several ships go through at the same time.
A pigeon laded on the handle bars of the bike right in front of me and stayed there for several minutes!
Here you see the water coming into the lock. Pretty cool!
As you can see, boats tie into the locks very close to the walls. It is very important that the boats are not drifting around in there.
Next to us in the lock was a long barge carrying a load of sand. We saw these barges on the river all the time! Many were clearly family run boats and had kid's bicycles and play equipment on the back deck, along with the family car. This barge was fun because the kids were dressed in their beach clothes and were having a great time sliding down the sand dunes and playing on their own private beach!

I am always fascinated by the different styles of buildings we saw, and along this river we saw everything from Medieval to modern, sometimes side by side.
Here we have another church, large and old, on the river banks.
Belgium had a lot of bridges made in variations of this style which were really fun to see.
Isn't this an interesting building? The roofs were usually slated in this part of the country, and therefore black, with lots of fancy brick work.