September 7 - One Day, Three Countries

Monday - Julich, Germany to Bilzen, Belgium
It is 52F and foggy/drippy as we prepare to leave this morning. We put on ALL our rain gear.

What an interesting way to grow gourds.

It was a little too drippy for pictures most of the morning. Hot drinks and cookies constituted breakfast #2. Now we are in Aachen where it seemed like we went uphill for a long time.

Time to say "Goodby" to Germany.

The only way we knew we were in The Netherlands was that this town was across the border on our map.

It had also stopped being drippy though it still was not much warmer.

Outside of Gulpin

School must have let out because all these kids kept passing us as we went up the hill to Margraten.

This part of The Netherlands is not flat!

Enjoying the downhill glide.

 We saw a sign in Margraten about the American Cemetery being just outside of town in the direction we were going. We were very glad that it was dry this afternoon so we could just take our time and explore this beautiful but haunting place.

The cemetery was dedicated in 1960.

The Dutch are really good a keeping all the kinds of transportation moving so getting through a big city like Maastricht went pretty smoothly. This was a good thing as it is already 4:00 and we still need to get to Belgium.

We saw a much more modern side of Maastricht than 4 years ago.

Almost Belgium

We don't think the speed limits will really be a factor for us!

It was almost 5:00, so we decided to have dinner before heading to the B&B where we had reservations for  the night. The Mac and Ham and Cheese at Chopin's really hit the spot. We finally arrived at 6:30 and our host, Stefan, not only helped carry our panniers upstairs but he did our laundry too! So nice to be warm and dry as we hung out in our quite purple room after a very long but interesting day.