Day trip into nearby Maastricht to pick up Sandra (who caught the train from Amsterdam)…

…and to explore the town.

I (Tom) temporarily lost Francis and Helen, and was wandering up and down the street looking. A waiter noticed me and asked “what have you lost”, looked down and said “your shoes?”. After a couple of quizzical or disapproving looks from cafe patrons, I went back to the Tesla to grab my shoes. But, when again squeezing through the eating strip, an older lady moved aside and quipped in Dutch something like “after you, shorts”. For the record, many people were wearing shorts. I can’t win.

Croquettes (again) for lunch, with a salad, at one of the many cafes. Yum.

With the scarcity of public toilets, we’re learning to make use of the cafe facilities. The first big language error wasn’t mine, surprisingly. Francis, who knows a fair bit of Dutch from her childhood household, somehow managed to end up in the men’s toilet. She emerged to ask me what I was doing in there. I just pointed at the urinals. Oops!

We took a tour around Maastricht in a solar powered electric road train. Beautiful town. Very active. Many bikes. A university campus next to an old fortified wall. Impressive church. Old guy on a bike next to a segway tour. Old architecture mixed with new attractions.

Charging:

The “Q-Park” has many parking spots with EV destination chargers. The perfect way to charge: during the peak electricity supply of the day, while parked for a few hours doing something else.

The cable and payment card supplied with our UFODRIVE rented Tesla worked fine. But after plugging in I realised that the open charge port door of the car next to me was too big to allow my passenger to exit my car. So, unplug, reverse, open door, exit passenger, plug in again. I forgot to tap the payment card this time, which I didn’t realise until returning to leave later 🤦. No drama, though. We had over 400km range, which we wouldn’t be using all week.