Corinne Crawford
On my first or second day in the Netherlands after dropping my aunt off at the dog competition arena, I googled “ruins and historical places” near me and researched some of my closer options. There were some Roman ruins about 45 minutes away so I popped that into the navigation system in the car and took off at about 11:00am. The drive was uneventful and after I struggled to find a place to park, accidentally going down a dead end very narrow drive and having to slowly back out while delivery trucks were waiting on me…, I wandered into the park where these ruins were located, Valkhof Park. https://www.valkhof.nl/
Oh I also picked this place because it was free. I swing between being very frugal and very careless with money on this trip and I can’t even figure out my own criteria of when to splurge and when to conserve. It will probably be important in the long term to pay attention to this. Anyway, to be honest, the park, the ruins, were not that impressive or memorable but I was glad I went and it was a nice day so I sat in that park and researched more of the things to do or see in this town, Nijmegen. Turns out that apparently Nijmegen is the oldest city in The Netherlands. Now if I learned anything about superlatives from Belize (Jodi, I am talking to you) this might not be entirely true but I suppose it depends on how you are defining the achievement so it was true enough for me. Not only was it the “oldest city”, it boasted the oldest shopping street in the Netherlands, whatever that means.
So I headed that way. It has been warm so I took the route along the river. Side note: Sooooo many cities in Europe have a river as the backbone of the city. Is that an obvious thing? It just doesn’t ring as super true for cities in the US I think. After about 20 minutes, I made the turn to intersect with the street in question. All the while thinking, hmmm, I should have paid more attention to where I parked the car… but it was in a garage near the park so I didn’t think it would be too difficult to find my way back. The street – actually streets, there was more than one offshoot- were vey interesting and lively with a mix of shops and restaurants. I was starting to feel a little hungry and thirsty but many places seemed closed at 12:30pm for outdoor seating and lunch but I found Café Samson open with seating. I always love sitting on a terrace/patio at restaurants and bars to watch the people go by and enjoy the outdoors but all of the tables in the shade outside on the terrace were taken so I went inside and ordered a beer. It has the vibe/feel of an Irish pub but it wasn’t. The menu seemed very basic so I asked the bartender what his favorite lunch was on the menu and was delivered a nice melted ham and cheese sandwich and I ordered another beer.
