TomTom you are so wrongwrong

This past Saturday, Alyssa and me took a day trip to the very most southern end of the Netherlands, a quaint little town called Maastricht. Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands dating back to the time of the Romans. It is home to a few universities and is a predominately Catholic area as opposed to the northern Protestants. It takes about 2 hours to get to Maastricht from Rotterdam via train or car. On this excursion we went by Alyssa's mom's toyota corolla. To assist with getting around a foreign country Alyssa's mother bought a TomTom navigation system which has an English accent and has been nicknamed "Fred". With this our story begins.ili

Around 10:30 in the morning we hopped into the car and programmed Maastricht into Fred and were comfortable with him just leading us on our merry trip. For about an hour Fred is giving us excellent directions. Then we enter Eindhoven. We've been to Eindhoven before. On our Oktoberfest trip we stopped there to pick up some more people on the bus, including the Farmers of infamous drinking ability. We've also watched a football (soccer) match between the Eindhoven club, nicknamed the Boerers (farmers), and a Romanian club. Needless to say we were familiar with the town. There apparently is a difference between knowing "a" town and knowing "the" town. Fred did not know "the" town.

As we're driving towards Eindhoven there is a lot of construction going on. This doesn't seem like too much of a challenge since we are just going around the town and not through it. Fred is confused though. We take an exit towards the city where we are supposed to take a left then take another left and go back in the direction we just came. With the construction going on we can only take one left but can take a left later on down the road. This continues to confound Fred. He continues to change his route as we veer off the path he's taking us. We eventually make it back to the highway we were on and head south but just about as soon as we get to highway speed Fred has become so twisted and turned around that he tells us to take a road which according to his map is on the far right lane, when in fact it is the left lane. Now we are heading towards town and Fred adjusts his route once more. By now we are fed up with Fred and decide that we'll just use the map on the iPhone to get us where we need to go. So Fred gets put to sleep and I become lead navigator. About an hour later we have reached our destination of Maastricht. We park the car and walk into town.

We start off on the north end of the historic part of the city and eat lunch at a chinese cafe in the Markt square. In the square is the Stadhuis and a cool statue of a man (can't remember the name) holding an eternal flame.

We then crossed a bridge, looked around then crossed the oldest bridge in the Netherlands.

Once across we were in the main shopping district of Maastricht with lots of people and plenty of shops. From there we went to the Vrijtof square which is supposed to be the main touristy area probably because of its two churches:

Sint-Janskerk

Sint-Servaasbasiliek

From the Vrijtof we headed towards the old Roman quarter which is actually a lot smaller than you would think. Once we got there we headed south to the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwbasiliek (Basilica of Our Lovely Lady) square. After that we headed west towards Maastricht University. After all this walking though finding a restroom became a bit of a priority. Usually in Europe you can't use a restroom in a restaurant unless you pay, so that was out of the question. Luckily we were near the Natural History Musuem but it was only open for another 25 min. So we rushed over there taking a few pictures along the way.

 We eventually made it to the museum only to find the doors to it closed and locked. We attempted to push and pull them to see if they were stuck but to no luck. Then just as soon as we were about to turn around a lady opened the door. So we asked if we could use the restroom and she said it was fine. A good way to tell how good a museum is where they put their exhibits. If there are exhibits EVERYWHERE then its probably a good museum. This one had exhibits in the entry hall, in the floor, on the way to the bathroom; knowledge anywhere you looked. Sadly we had to leave though since the museum was closing. We will be back though to check it out.

After the museum we walked a little bit west and found the old city walls. Here you could actually walk along the top of the wall just as people did centuries ago.

We then walked east to cross the 3rd bridge of the day. On the other side we grabbed some food at a gastropub called El Python, which was a very good name for the place since our bellies were stretched like we just swallowed an animal. We save just enough room to swing by a gelatto place and pick up a tasty single-scooped dessert. With the daylight fading we headed back to the car and drove our way back to Rotterdam. We tried to use Fred again but he apparently was so frustrated with us that he wouldn't pick up signal, so we just put him to sleep again. It must've helped because we made it home without any problems in Eindhoven.