24-07-2009 om 13:43 by Stafford Wadsworth

When you've seen all the bulb fields you can manage, had your fill of wooden shoes and windmills and negotiated the hash dens, gay bars, the red light district and the canals of good old Amsterdam, why not head south for a real European experience? Better still, you could avoid all the clichés and fly direct to Maastricht or via Liège.

Why Maastricht? Apart from the fact it’s a household word and the place where the dreaded treaty was signed, it's at the heart of a region with more claim to be truly European than London or Paris. The attractive county-town capital of the Dutch province of Limburg has more in common with its neighbors in Liège and Aachen than with all those people shunting big cheeses around in the bulb fields.

Until the end of the 18th century, Maastricht had two rulers: the Prince-Bishop of neighboring Liège and the Dutch Republic, far away to the north. Before that time, a thousand years earlier, both Liège and Maastricht had the great emperor Charlemagne as their sovereign. He it was who thought up the whole European idea in the first place, though he did have a monk from Yorkshire, called Alcuin, to educate people to it.

The Emperor was born in Liège and had his favorite palace in Aachen. He must have popped into his local in Maastricht for a pint occasionally, after spearing the odd wild boar in the Ardennes or filling his net with salmon from the Meuse, while trying to avoid the company of his several wives. Yes, Maastricht, in the Land of Charlemagne, has always been at the heart of European history. Although it is Dutch, it could very well have been Belgian.

When the French Revolution and Napoleon brought an end to the principality of Liège, most of Belgium fell to the Dutch King. The Catholic Belgians, however, got fed up with their Protestant monarch and decided to kick him out in the 1830s. The province of Limburg, being largely Catholic too, would have been happy to go with them. But the Dutch General Dibbets held on to the fortress and Maastricht remained part of the Netherlands.

Start your visit on a guided walk near Peter Post's 17th century city hall, with separate steps for both its Dutch and Liège rulers. Then see the great Basilica of Saint Servatius and the Protestant church of St. Jan on the Vrijthof, site of August's gastronomic fair. Adjacent to them is the Spanish Government, a treasure house of the domestic interior. Then comes the fortress-like bastion of the Church of Our Lady, with its Byzantine choir and the chapel to Our Lady, the Star of the Sea, always ablaze with a mass of candles.

The city squares are full of chairs and tables. There is a bar for every day of the year and a host of fantastic restaurants. They include no fewer than five Michelin-starred restaurants in Maastricht and another half dozen, which would have star status anywhere else. The Meuse-Rhine Euroregion - the official EU designation for the Land of Charlemagne - has around 21 such establishments, but the true foody paradise is Maastricht.

Begin at Chateau Neercanne just outside town and dine on foie gras and lobster in the splendidly restored 18th century dining room. The terraced garden with its sculpture and exquisite topiary below are a joy to the eye. The hillside above, honeycombed with caves, houses the noble Burgundies that you're about to drink. No wonder the Queen of the Netherlands chose this spot to host Europe's heads of state, when new life was breathed once more into Charlemagne's old idea. Tsar Peter the Great dined here too in 1717.

You could go later to one of the many downtown restaurants, which include starred venues like Toine Hermsen, Beluga (2*), Tout à Fait - all within walking distance of one another. Just across the river, a stone's throw away from Rossi's Bonnefanten Museum, Government House and the MECC (home to TEFAF, the world's greatest art fair) is the Rechtstraat with its antique print & bookshops and galleries. There, you'll find Mediterraneo, a distinguished Italian restaurant.

Round the corner, Ca' del Biro would be a good choice. Au Coin Des Bons Enfants near the university is excellent and starred too, but you'd still only be halfway down the first division list. The succulent white asparagus is the thing to eat from the end of April through to June 21st. A la flamande, asparagus with ham off the bone, new potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and Butter/Parsley sauce is addictive. Instead of the Alsace try a local vintage with it. Apostelhoeve, within the city boundaries, produces an excellent pinot gris - as we've mentioned before.

The area was a wine growing area, until Napoleon came along and had the vines pulled up to stifle the competition. Good beers like Brand, Gulpener, and Alfa, with its deep Artesian wells, are plentiful; Belgium's great Trappist beers are an option too. Sample a bottle of the rich Westvleteren brew at around 11% with local Rommedou cheese and pear treacle.

For something completely different, take a trip, only fifteen minutes by car, to Valkenburg to get back into shape for another day's dining. Valkenburg has a spa, Thermae 2000, where you can take off all your clothes and have a relaxing steam bath or sauna, followed by an ice cold plunge and a walk on the lawns in the altogether.

If this is not to your taste, you could go to nearby Chateau St. Gerlach and see the fabulously restored estate (at a cost of EUR 22.7m). It now has a starred restaurant too and is rated the best (5 star) hotel in the Netherlands by the German Schlummer Atlas (2005). Walk in the exquisitely manicured gardens, look across the hedge at the wild cattle and ponies in the nature reserve and visit the Netherlands only Baroque church, with its fabulous frescoes. At night, the Holland Casino might be the place to meet some local high rollers or EU bigwigs who have always known where to enjoy themselves.

You could conclude with one of the most curious of this area’s geopolitical features the ‘DG’ - short for Belgium’s German-speaking region – with its capital at Eupen. Imagine one of those pre-20th century German princely states and you’ll get some idea: with precision engineering companies that supply parts to the world’s aerospace industries, a chocolate museum; festivals, like Carnival, where the whole town gets in on the act and parades in the streets in costume; with a pervasive charm and intimacy, where everyone knows one another and seems to include you too.

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