The Southern Holland Experience

Before coming to Finland for the wedding two weeks ago, Karen, Vendela and me went on an one day trip around the South of Holland.

We had a special guest with us. Our one and only, lovely Samantha.

We left early in the morning, on the first train with the aim of going to as many towns/cities as possible.

As we were sooo tired we just decided to go as far as possible and sleep on the train.

So Heerlen it was!

We get out of the train, hear Pinkpop advertisements everywhere on the speakers, see a lot of people walking around trying to catch different trains and...we walk outside of the station to see and hear:

purely nothing.

Everything was closed. We had arrived to ghost town.

Mock us? Ok.

Of course we could have thought about our travel date a bit better... Choosing a Sunday which was even a special Sunday when literally everything (ok, except for a couple of cafés) were closed.

Heerlen, the most Southern 'bigger' city of Holland, turned out to be the most terrible destination ever. Maybe on a lively day it could have been nice? I don't know. But I have no need for visiting again.

At least my travel companions were a 10, so we made the best out of Heerlen anyway.

My favorite shop from the outside in Heerlen was most likely Fashion 4 Fashion. The name speaks for itself. Think about the 80's paint, prints and 'sale' -signs the shop had, attracting customers..ooh, yes please. You may probably also be able to imagine the Fashion 4 Fashion clothing line. Super trendyyyh!

After strolling the empty streets for a moment or two, we decided to hop back on the train and head to Maastricht. Hoping for better success!

Oh yes. We had arrived to a city that was worth visiting. Maastricht.

Pretty old and cosy streets with small cute boutiques.

The overall feeling was a hundred times better than what we experienced in Heerlen. Of course as Maastricht is a bigger city, there were more people, too. A marathon was being run that day. We went to eat ice-cream aside of the running route and hurrayed for the devoted runners in the heat of the sunshine. (which unfortunately for us did not last for longer than just visiting Maastricht)

Maastricht, though, did have some reaaally interesting art. Oh the horror!

Next in plan was to hop on a random train and go somewhere.

Eindhoven it was.

The city of high crime rates and the Ryanair airport. Nice.

Death city - again. Hunger was arising and we decided to hunt for a nice place to eat. After searching and searching, and not being able to decide, we finally found an extremely good wok place. As Karen said: "The only reason why I would go back to Eindhoven would be to go eat at that amazing wok place!" And I totally agree. Eindhoven did not look that interesting as a city either. If the weather had been better, maybe we would have gone walking around more - out of the centre, and found the nice parks and architecture. But on a rainy day, especially Sunday, all you can find are tens of bums walking around and begging for money. We surely got a lot of those kinds of friends that day!

I'm not quite sure where Media Markt is.

Last and least: Roosendaal.

We definitely know how to select the most uninteresting places to visit. Maastricht being an exception.

Traveling on the trains for hours and probably changing trains in the most interesting cities to visit the most uninteresting ones. How good a job is that!

Yeah.

My advice if you are planning to travel to the South of Holland:

visit Maastricht, Den Haag and Rotterdam.

All you need.

We were all so glad to go back home. It was late, it was getting cold, we were still tired and...we just had had enough of all these random small towns with nothing to do.

But.. I'm sure these towns are much better on a sunny day. (that is also not a Sunday)

Still I'm not planning on having a vacation in Heerlen, Eindhoven or Roosendaal in the near future. ;-)

<3

Linda

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