Pronouncing the name of the city was hard (hint: ‘ij’ is pronounced ‘aay’ and ‘g’ is a sound no English speaker can make), but getting there was an easy 90 minute train from Amsterdam.

I met greeted at the train station by my old uni mate Mitch and his wife Lu. They had an old bike for me, and I must have looked funny riding down the bike path with my 75L pack on my back. It was only a short 5 minute ride to their beautiful apartment not far from the city centre.

It was really nice just to sit down and relax at their place, not feeling the need to rush out and see the city in the little time I usually have in a city. We had a good chat about work, life and travel over a nice meal and some beers.

The next day we took the bikes into the city and had a good look around the little town of Nijmegen. It claims to be the oldest town in the Netherlands, but little of the original building survived the time and wars that have passed. There are still some interesting architecture in part of the city, and some nice modern buildings too. There was a nice, small town buzz in the main pedestrian streets which I’m told becomes packed full of people on the weekends.

Later in the afternoon Mitch and I rode over the bridge to the tiny town on the other side and enjoyed riding thru the Dutch countryside.

Mitch and Lu had asked me what I wanted to see in the area, we had discussed many possibilities, by my mention of Luxembourg sparked their interest and it was quickly decided to head there for a weekend road trip… but more on that in another blog.

After returning from my road trip I was happy to relax, catch up on a few blogs and other tasks I had been ignoring the past few weeks in my rush around Europe. I even got the chance to get back in the kitchen and cook a meal to my gracious hosts.

So it was great to spend some time living and travelling with some old friends on this trip.

This post is tagged Nijmegen, The Netherlands