Gouda, the cheese city!

Last saturday we used the opportunity of being off work the whole weekend (well, more I didn't had to work the weekend) and finally went somewhere again. As our pocket money still is pretty limited every month (we should stop shopping I guess!), we went to a city nearby The Hague, Gouda!

Yes Gouda! I guess you ALL know the cheese called Gouda, don't you?! Gouda is a city in the West of the Southern part of The Netherlands. Yes, it's pretty famous for its cheese (but so is Alkmaar as well) with about 80.000 inhabitants so not really a big city. Quite nice city but not really a lot to see. So if you are crazy about cheese, don't miss out Gouda. Otherwise, visit more nice cities...

15th-century city hall!

Travellers are we in this world, no inhabitants!

The pearls of the North

Almost 2 weeks ago, we had a fabulous sunday trip to the North of The Netherlands.
Thanks to those train tickets which with you can travel one day through the whole Netherlands with the train for a really really good price, like around 15 €, we explored the province of Friesland, in the very North of the Netherlands.


First, it took us to Leeuwarden (around 110,00 inhabitants) ! What a beautiful city in the province of Friesland! For me, it looks like in Northern Germany. Much green landscape and old, historical houses, which made me feel a bit like being home again.
A little warning before, this post will content a lot of pictures. A lot! If you want to see more, as I don't upload them all, check out my flickr album of the 2 cities: Leeuwarden and Groningen .

Impressions of Leeuwarden:

Travelling and listening to awesome music = Magnifcent day!

Obviously, the harbour.

Stadhuis

Library.

Beautiful, or?

After we checked out the old, historical part of Leeuwarden, we moved on to Groningen. GRONINGEN!!!! YES!!!! Finally again :). I have to admit, I have been there couple of times when I was really young with my family and greater family (they live near the border and everytime we went there on holidays we went to the Netherlands. And as my family told me, we went to Groningen...). So I had a small reunion after 18 years! Wohooo! I really looked forward to going to Groningen some day as this place was also on my bucket list. Also Leeuwarden but just because my host mother used to work there and told me I should visit it once. We didn't plan to Groningen this day actually. Well, maybe but we wanted to check Friesland out and then we decided to go to Groningen after we have been to Leeuwarden, as it's just an hour train journey again.
Groningen (around 200,00 inhabitants...), a big city and WHAT A CITY!!! Very beautiful student city. I liked it there. Maybe I'll go back there for studying but nooo, it's so far away from everything but Germany!

Impressions of Groningen:

:)

Funny names on the way to Groningen...

Guess what! The train station...

Plein.

The harbour with an amazing sunset we've got to see.

The university of Groningen.

THIS!

Maastricht

Last saturday we went to Maastricht. Maastricht is the capital city in the province of Limburg in the southeast of the Netherlands. Also Maastricht is close to Belgium and Germany.

For us, it was a looong journey because in the night from Friday to Saturday the weather thought it might be cool if it snows for one night in the Netherlands so it was snowing everywhere but in The Hague (it was too warm there) so on Saturday morning almost no train ran in the Netherlands which was fun as we planned to go to Maastricht this day.
In the end, there were some trains running and we had to go via Eindhoven and not via Utrecht which was actually faster that way. And, we drove through Breda and finally kind of saw some bits of Tilburg. Aha.

SNOW! We had snow in Maastricht. And not too less :)

Beautiful!

Stadhuis

Snowmaaaan!

This doesn't look like it is in the Netherlands. More Belgium or France.

Bisschopsmolen

Cosy atmosphere

Insider tip given to us by a local! Awesome! :)

Long exposure in Maastricht.