Day trip to Maastricht - Christmas Market

I am back again with another trip in the beautiful Netherlands: Maastricht!

I actually don’t know how big of a coincidence we managed to create with this trip, but right when my best friend visited me for Christmas, I was lucky enough to meet with another high school friend who was visiting her boyfriend in Amsterdam and… when you have all these planets aligned, of course, you decide to make a group trip! After all, everything gets cheaper when you travel with a group, right?

So here we were again, embarked on the train for only 7 euros for both ways with the group promotion the Dutch train company - Ns.nl has. I think this saved me a lot of money and do not think I had so many friends around all the time to meet the minimum number of people for the discount, but we simply did what everyone was doing.

We created a Facebook group for the trip and asked on big Facebook groups about people who needed to go to Maastricht on the same date with us. The only challenge might be to to decide who will buy all the tickets and then gather the money via bank transfer. In the end, everyone gets really cheap tickets both for you and your friends, and some other strangers that happened to make the same trip. It’s a win-win.

So, although Maastricht is not such a big city to wonder around for more than one afternoon, this is what we did at least to properly get the vibe of the city:

Natural History Museum

I have to admit that we went inside mostly because of the cold weather, and because this museum was included on the national museum card we all had anyway, but surprisingly enough, we actually enjoyed it.

The many rooms you can stroll around are very informative and interactive so that you can find things to see for at least one hour: fossils, plants, dinosaur skeletons, stuffed animals, modern creatures too etc. If you have the museum card, why not, otherwise, the entrance for our friends was 5 euros.

Sant Servaasbridge

Coming from the train station, we arrived to this beautiful bridge and even the sun came out for us a little bit to take some nice pictures. Still, it is only a bridge, not an attraction so there was not much to do here for us.

Once we got on the other side of the Meuse river though, we arrived right in the middle of the city center, full of tourists and shops, and stroopwafels and mule wine. Oh, it felt like Christmas for sure..

Sint Janskerk

Anywhere you go in Europe, try to find tall towers of churches to climb because not only do they have the best panoramas, but they are also cheap. When we arrived to the tower they were closed, but luckily enough we managed to cry and negotiate our way up with a lovely man from the administration for only 2 euros.

You will have a lot to climb, but hey, the sore feet will make a great memory of the view you had up there. We actually managed to put some other things on the visit list since we also spotted a very lively Christmas market nearby.

Besides the beautiful panorama, we also learned something about the tower that left us more or less speechless: although the tour was made with cheap yellow millstone, the rich people that were attending the ceremony in this church decided to paint it red. Everything seemed ok for 1 second, but then the same man told us the red was coming from 500 slaughtered protestants. Don’t worry, nowadays they keep the colour with other blood-free methods…

Basilica Our Lady – Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek

Right in the middle of the city, we stopped to admire this beautiful immense church that was built over 1000 years ago in a Romanesque style. The interior is quite sad and somber but the main altar and choir surround the overall atmosphere in peace and tranquility

De Bisschopsmolen Mill

Making our way to the old city center, we discovered this very old mill that actually dates all the way to the 7thcentury.

There’s not much to do here, apart from maybe appreciating the way people were taking care of their businesses around the town and that you are able to take the same narrow streets as they used to over 1000 years ago.

The picturesque architecture will definitely give you the cosy vibe you can find all over Netherlands and maybe here a little bit more. The best thing is that if you are hungry, there’s also a bakery attached right to it.

Maastricht Christmas market square

This is the place if you want to find pretty much everything from clothes to food. The cosy and Christmassy vibe is everywhere, even with the one million tourists that pass by. We already found Maastricht to be very welcoming and Dutch looking, but during the holidays, the extra spellbinding edge was what we enjoyed the most. It is also said this Christmas market is one of the best in the Netherlands anyway.

The Vrijthof square in the city centre had everything from shops to a Ferris wheel. We’ve also heard about an ice skating rink but we somehow managed to miss it. Too bad we didn’t know about the one in the Jekerkwartier neighbourhood that had one all year round.

We ended our day at a pub drinking some beers and getting ourselves a little bit more warm after a full day spent in the cold.

All in all, Maastricht was for sure a nice idea, although there’s not much to do as you can see my traveling experiences list was quite short with this one, but I would still give it a go again. As I said, it’s one of the coziest cities you will ever see for sure!

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