The White Village of Thorn

The beautiful weather enticed us onto our motorcycles and north to the white village of Thorn, the Netherlands. It's a beautiful place with cobblestone streets and many, many "whitewashed" brick houses clustered around the village church. We must have come up on one of the many weddings this afternoon, because the area around the church was blocked off to vehicular traffic. Not at all put off by this, we went on a side street and went into the parking lot of the village administration offices where we had a lovely view of the back of the church.

The courtyard of the admin offices had an interesting statue of a short, stout crusader named Ansfried who had established the church and Benedectine abbey around 975 A.D. on land formed when the swamp running alongside the Roman road between Maastricht and Nijmegen  was drained. Ansfried later became Bishop of Utrecht, the Netherlands.

We passed through the village and almost visited our favorite lake in the area. A muddy parking lot was enough to send us on to our next stop, a pub near the Maas (also known as the Meuse) River where we were able to park our bikes and have a cup of coffee in the sunshine. Evidently there were quite a few people who had the same idea, because we grabbed the last available table on the open terrace.

From there, we moved on to Mariahoop where we took a short break in the church parking lot. That area is so incredibly peaceful, and we saw quite a parade of people on bicycles, walking dogs or each other, and a variety of scooters, quads, and motorcycles strolling or rolling quietly by. We finally fell in behind a small convoy of motorcycles and quads and headed towards Gangelt.

When Kevin made a turn to go into the town of Gangelt, I figured he had remembered a frites shop there that would be convenient for a bite of late lunch. I was pleasantly surprised when he turned in at El Greco, one of my favorite Greek restaurants in this area. Late lunch/early dinner was extravagant. 

After a salad of shredded lettuce, cabbage, tomato, olive, and Greek peppers, we enjoyed delicacies from the grill. Mine included squares of pork cutlet, chicken breast, and a gyros mix topped with a nice Greek yogurt and garlic sauce. Kevin had a chicken breast with white asparagus smothered in Hollandaise sauce. Both plates were served with spicy rice and fries.

All good things must come to an end, "they" say, so after the feeding frenzy was over we waddled out to the motorcycles and rolled home with about 80 more miles on our odometers.

What a beautiful day, and what a pleasure it is to spend that kind of time with my husband!