Holland & Belgium Viking River Cruise
Day 6: Wednesday, October 30, 2024 - Maastricht Nijmegen, The Netherlands
The day's statistics:
- Weather: upper 50s
- Steps: 11,736 Linda; 13,402 Steve
- Miles traveled (approximately): 168
The original itinerary called for us to be in Maastricht on this day. However, due to some canal work north
of Maastricht, we had headed northeast up a different waterway to Nijmegen (nigh-me-gen) instead.
Nijmegen is the oldest city in Netherlands.
There is a bridge down river a little bit - that we didn't pass - that was featured in the movie A Bridge Too Far.
I didn't take a picture of the menu on the first day on the ship, and after getting to it on the second day, I
wasn't going to go back and renumber everything just for that. So it is here.
This is the breakfast menu, and it never changes. What one orders from it can, however...
What is on the buffet is the same for 95% of the items and only a couple are usually changed.
Linda usually had the egg benedict.
I usually had something off the buffet that looked something like this, though if I wasn't so hungry in the
morning - such as the morning after the "Taste of ..." beffet dinner - I had an egg over easy with two
slices of toast and a couple slices of bacon.
While I was eating breakfast a saw this interesting bridge out the window.
Today's excursion is "Nijmegen by Foot", and we set out at about 9:00 with our guide Dakma.
This is an approximation of the route we took, starting at the black dot top center:
- Red line is to the first major stop near the statue and Holacost Memorial
- Purple line is is to the town center down main street before we turned off
- Orange line is past the fire line memorial, back to main street, and to chapel in the park
- Blue line is from the chapel back to the ship.
When we went back out on our own, we essentially headed back to main street - purple line - taking a slightly
more direct route, wandered around some, and then headed back to the ship.
We started off and first came across a couple statues.
A little bit down the road we came across some old flood gates that haven't needed be used in a few years.
We were at an elevated position - created as a berm to protect from flooding. So to continue into the town, we
had to go downstairs and under a building, and then we were inside the town.
We proceeded up the slight incline deeper into town. There were a collection of scultpures / artworks attached to the
sides of some of the buildings.
This shield indicates this is a protect property.
We were in the Jewish quarter. The statue represents a crying woman, dedicate in memorium to the Jews that lost their
lives to the Nazis, most of the names (not all were pictured) of the victims on plaques on a nearby wall.
We continued on.
We eventually came upon an orphanage. The medal brackets - the 'Y' shaped pieces below - on the walls are supposed to
be external support braces used for the stabilty of the construction.
We continued on, eventually arriving at a more main street.
We came across this group of stumbling stones.
For those that aren't aware, stumbling stones are markers placed outside the residents of Jews that were killed in
the holocaust. The marker shows the name, address, and the dates of their birth and death.
We have seen these in quite a few cities in Europe.
We started to approach a church that was at the top of a flight of stairs. On this flight, as other we saw afterward,
is a ramp to make transporting bicycles up and down the stairs much easier.
At the top of the stairs was an opening, much like a small courtyard sort of thing.
These two were taking pictures of each other all. over. the place. Supposedly they were newlyweds, but they
were taking so many pictures everywhere - but they were posed pictures. I'd bet these two were infuencers -
or trying to become influencers. They seemed to be more interested in taking pictures of each other rather
than be in the environment (if that makes sense). The guy also had a medalian of some sort hanging off his
backpack that clinked when he walked. The below was taken at a distance, on the sly.
We passed through the open area, around the side of the church, and down an alleyway.
This is the Blue Hand Pub, the oldest pub in Nijmegen; and a couple other sights.
This building that, upon closer inspection, had an owl in a corner.
We entered the courtyard of the Saint Stephen's Ecumenical church, with a building on
one side that had statues of the 12 apostles.
The church is going under a restoration that isn't expected to be completed until 2026.
We had to wait a few minutes - for 10:00 - but then we were able to go inside.
Because it was ecumenical, it was generally plain inside. And except for one window, there was no stained glass to be seen.
At the top of the chandeliers were little coat of arms. Each had a symbol representing different professions, such as
taylor, merchant, sailor, or something else.
The lone stained glass window.
The last few highlights in the church.
The church was rather small, and we didn't have too much time inside.
We continued our serpentine walk and wound up on a main street with a good amount of shops.
We also passed city hall.
The granite stone represents the center of the Middle Ages.
We turned right down an alley (next to the building with the statue in the last image in the group above). Weaved
a little, and turned left.
At this point, on the ground, was a series of "fire line" markers. During the war, there was an accidental aerial bombing
that killed hundreds of residents. They are honored with a plaque on the wall.
We continued down the alley and came upon a courtyard like opening that included a swingset, in honor and rememmbrance of
the kids that perished in the bombing.
Adjacent to the park was a two story mall with decorated bridges connecting the two sides.
We eventaully looped back to the main street and continued on.
We eventually arrived at Valkhof Park.
This park has a couple of ruins in it: one was part of a castle from ~1154, and the other is the still-usable
Nicholas chapel that is over 1,000 years old. The chapel has a door on the second floor indicating that there
was probably an additional structure next to it.
After the chapel, we were wrapping up our walking tour and were told we could go back into town, or
travel with our guide back to the ship.
We chose to return to the ship, and walked down some stairs, across and down the street, and were back at our starting point.
Docked adjacent to our ship was this Escape Boat - much like an escape room, but on the water (I guess).
I was able to get a full, unobstructed shop of our ship, the Kvasir.
We stopped by the cabin to shed our outerware, camera, and VOX devices and headed to the lounge.
We stopped by the coffee station and got a cup of coffee. They replaced the breakfast pastries with cookies.
While we didn't have a double-chocolate chip cookie now, I had one some other time and it was really good.
After relaxing a little, it was time for lunch.
We ate with Cindy and Larry, and Fred and Rosalee.
Sometimes during lunch, marketfare appetizers were brougght around to the tables. Today happened to be one of those day.
We both had the chicken salad.
Either neither of us had a menu appetizer, or we just don't remember having one - but since
there is no picture, we'll go with the former rather than the latter.
Linda had the New Orleans Style Muffuletta sandwich, and the Black Forest ice cream.
I had the Fish & chips, and the Black Forest ice cream.
After lunch it was still early. The ship wasn't scheduled to cast off until about 11:45 PM, so we had some free time.
While some passengers chose to remain onboard - we probably would have during our first couple of cruises - we chose
to go back into town for a little to do some more walking and sightseeing on our own.
I left the camera in the cabin and only had my mobile - not that it isn't capable...
We made our way - though by a slightly different route - to the street near the Jewish quarter with the statue (in
the picture above).
We found another wall sculpture.
We were later told that these were bird houses (with the pointy tops) and bat houses (flat tops).
We were told earlier about a synagogue on this street, but our first path didn't originally take us this way.
We took this staircase toward town.
We aren't quite sure, but we think this is apartment... 6? 7?
I wonder if this was out of spite or just because the occupant is creative.
These golden bicycles were parked outside what looked like a bookstore.
Back in town, we made our way back to the bridge over the mall. And took a selfie.
We returned to the main street, walked around a bit more, visited a couple shops, and then,
after a couple hours, we finally headed back to the ship.
We had some time, again, before dinner, so we returned to the lounge.
Eventually we had the port talk, and before we knew it, it was time for dinner.
We sat with Lori and Pete.
Linda had the Tom Kha gai, crab cake with grilled asparagus, and key lime pie.
I had the flammekueche, crispy roast pork, and Dutch plum cake.
Tonight we were going to be entertained by a musical group. Well, we were supposed to.
Apparently there was an issue with the group, and Hulgar contacted them and they said they couldn't make it and asked if
it would be okay for them to perform the following night. He said "no" since we won't be here anymore, unless they were
willing to drive all the way to Venlo. They weren't. So Hulgar had to improvise.
We wound up playing a "Family Feud®" style game. But instead of "100 people surveyed", it was "100 Viking travelers
surveyed". Linda and I paired up with Karen and Richard. Admittedly Richard was more of a bystander and participant on our team.
Our team didn't perform so well. For example, one of the questions was "name a fruit you don't just buy one of". Three of us answered
"bananas" right away, so that's what we guessed. That happened to be the fourth answer. The top answer was "grapes". Something like
that happened a couple other times. We had fun anyway.
After the game, we returned to our cabin for the evening, washed, and went to bed.