The Deep South

The province of Limburg, squeezed between Germany and Belgium, is the only part of the country that has rolling hillsides. We took a weekend to explore some of the unique sites, avoiding the main town of Maastricht (as we'll surely venture back). The Maas river (pictured above), which goes through Rotterdam on its way to the North Sea, cuts through much of the province.

Our first stop was the town of Thorn. The main draw is the "picturesqueness" of the whitewashed buildings in the town center that surround the old abbey church. The town itself dates from the 10th century; the church from the 12th (although like most old churches it has undergone a number of changes).

From Thorn we headed to the town of Arcen, famous for its Kasteeltuinen (castle gardens). Really more of an "estate" than a castle, the gardens are quite extensive.

Fall hadn't quite taken hold yet, so many of the roses and other flowers were still in bloom. There are also some small animal exhibits; among others we saw cranes, antelope, and capuchin monkeys (all pictured below; click to enlarge any photo). There's also a pic on our daily blog.

We stayed in the small town of Kessel. We had a neat room in what looked like an old stablehouse next to the castle ruins. We picnicked by twilight next to the castle along the river Maas, watching the muskrats in the river and listening to a production of "Romeo & Juliet" being performed inside the castle (in dutch, which was quite novel for us).

The next day we headed down to the Netherlands American War Cemetery in Margraten. The only American military cemetery in The Netherlands honors the soldiers who fought in this region during WWII. To see more, here's a post from our daily blog.

On our way home we skirted into Belgian Limburg (yes, just to confuse you, both countries have a Limburg province).

Rochelle was able to enjoy one of her favorites ... mussels ... and with apologies to the dutch and french, she still insists that Belgium does them best.

And I was able to enjoy one of my favorites, Belgian beer ... with apologies to just about every european country, Belgium wins here too, if you like unique flavorful beers.

Tongeren is dominated by its 13th century gothic church. Next to the church is a WWI monument, topped by small children or cherubs that almost look like they're playing with war implements. Pictured below are some detail shots from the church and the memorial (sorry for the blurry crop).

Come back for our next post on 15 October when we return to Brussels.

Off to Chelsea

Since we landed in The Netherlands last year, Rochelle has been waiting for her chance to go to one of the huge garden shows in the UK. So we hopped over to London to go to the biggest of the big, the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Garden Show. Rochelle's even a member of the RHS even though we don't live in the UK. The weather was anything but spectacular this trip, but luckily the clouds parted on Friday, the day we went to the show.

We decided that we wanted a different view of London, so we took the advice of friends and stayed outside of the city in Richmond-Upon-Thames. Only about 30 minutes by tube, Richmond is a very casual river town, with a very nice pub & restaurant scene. We flew in Thursday morning and spent the rest of the day pretty much just strolling around town. It was off-and-on cloudy but at least not raining. For more about Richmond visit the photoblog.

We loved the name of this wine store in Richmond.

How british can you get ... watching an evening of cricket from a Richmond pub.

In order to try to beat the crowds, we headed out early for Chelsea and made it there right at opening time. Even then it was pretty populated; I found that I didn't take very many garden pictures, because you couldn't get a shot without a ton of people in it. The shots below don't do the gardens justice ... click the links for full descriptions. Rochelle's favorite garden was the Linnaeus garden -- she does tend to like whites & blues (click the link to see why there was a tribute to Linnaeus). My favorite was the Fetzer garden, not because they are a former client of mine, but because I liked the way they recreated a California style garden, especially the real vines and the cool bat house. We both liked the Cancer Research garden with its wood sculpture.

Pictured (click to enlarge): Linnaeus, Fetzer, and Cancer Research gardens

By 10-10:30 or so the legendary crowd was in full force. We finished looking at the displays in the pavilion, then took a walk through some more of the outside commercial exhibits. We tried our first Pimm's cocktail and decided it must be an acquired taste. So we headed for an early lunch at the Laurent-Perrier/Loch Fyne champagne/seafood restaurant. We tried unsuccessfully to find a boat launch from the area, and ended up heading back to Richmond for the evening.

Pictured: midday crowds at Chelsea

Saturday & Sunday were miserably rainy, so we decided to skip our planned visit to the Kew Garden and head into the city. On Saturday we shopped on Oxford Street (it seemed almost as crowded as the flower show) and took a boat ride on the Thames during a break in the rain. We visited the British Museum, which is very rich in history/archaeology. Sunday we headed in to the Tate Modern. Before we know it we were back on the train to Gatwick and taking off for home. Hopefully we'll make it to one of the other big shows while we're living in Europe.

Pictured: (L) From our boat tour, a view of the HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge.

(R) The Millennium Bridge (click the link to read about its interesting history), looking from the Tate Modern to St. Paul's (evidently this area is in the midst of a building boom!)