This weekend, our adventure continued as we finally mastered the fine art of taking the train. I say "finally" because we have tried and failed before. One Saturday before our car or furniture arrived, we walked a few blocks to the train station (a concrete platform with a ticket machine and a couple benches) and stared at the ticket machine which is, of course, all in Dutch.

We actually managed to press all the right buttons to get tickets to Valkenburg, a touristy old town nearby, until we got to the part where we had to pay. The machine supposedly takes coins and Dutch bank cards. However, when we tried feeding it our coins, it absolutely, positively refused to take them. Hmm. Ben has a bank card, but had no money on it at that point, so that didn't work either. So we sighed, turned around, and walked back home to sit and stare at the walls and watch Dutch television all day.

But, like I said, our train adventure this weekend was a success! Again we made it through all the button pushing of the crazy Dutch ticket machine, and were ready with our bankcard. We put it in, the machine whirred and clicked, and then it spit out the card, but no ticket. Hmmm. So we tried again. And again. No ticket. Finally we went through our pockets and scraped together just enough in coins to buy our tickets and fed them to the machine, which happily ate them and spit out our tickets. Apparently our machine is a little finicky. Some days it likes coins, some days it likes cards. I hope it never loses its appetite completely, because then we'll be stuck.

We settled on to a bench to wait for our train, and within a few minutes it pulled up. Yay! So we went to get on, but as we stood in front of the doors, they did not open. Hmmm. We looked at each other, looked at the doors, poked the doors, looked at each other. Hmmm. Luckily, before the train pulled away I noticed a button a couple feet to right of the door that was labeled "Deuren Openen". Aha! Openen! So I pushed it and sure enough, the doors opened and let us on. Thankfully, the train was pretty empty and we don't think anyone noticed the two dumb Americans standing on the platform poking the doors and looking around confusedly. After that we found some seats and made it to Valkenburg without any further mishaps. Success!



Valkenburg was very nice, and probably would have been even better if it had not been very cold and a little rainy. It's a very touristy town because A) It's very old and pretty, B) It has caves and stuff, and C) It has ruins of a castle that was built around 1100, and destroyed at some point since then. Very cool.

Since it was Sunday, only about half the stores were open and it wasn't very busy or crowded so we just wandered up and down the streets, took some pictures, and looked at shops that sold things like postcards and wooden shoes. Finally, on our way back to the train station, we stopped at a little bakery and bought some apple turnovers and cookies. Mmmm. They were delicious.





The photos make it look warmer than it really was; we were getting pretty damp and frosty by the time we got on the train to go home. We definitely want to go back to Valkenburg and explore the castle ruins, but maybe when it's sunny, or at least not quite so chilly.