Valkenburg Christmas Market

Last weekend we decided to go to a Christmas market here in the Netherlands.  It was a little rainy but it was warm out so we thought why not.

We went to Valkenburg which is only about an hour drive for us.  The city was beautiful.  I have heard it called the Christmas city of the Netherlands.  There are hundreds of Christmas markets all around us, but the reason we decided to go to this was is because it is inside of an actual cave :)

Valkenburg is a really popular market to go to I guess and we had to wait in line to even get inside. Once inside it wasn't too terribly crowded, not like the market we went to last year in Dusseldorf where we couldn't even get through with our stroller. 

We walked around for quite a while and of course Jackson managed to spot a tractor at one of the boothes.  Man I tell ya, he has an eye for them!  We found a few little Christmas ornaments and some fresh sugar waffles dipped in white chocolate (delish). We ended up seeing most of the booths but the further along we got the hotter it became.  I was all of a sudden claustrophobic and ready to get it out NOW! I couldn't peel off my coat and scarf fast enough! 

So we made our way back out, avoiding the tractor boothes and walked around the cute little down town.  It was such a nice little city center with their decorations up, the stores were just calling our names (and Jackson's too).  After walking around for quite a while we thought we should head home, plus it was starting to rain again!

We get to the car and what do we find? A good ole parking ticket. BOOOOO!!! It turns out this wasn't just any old ticket though. Little did we (and the 3 other cars parked next to us) know, we were parked in a handicap spot. The ticket was for a whopping 340 euro. That is $449.00.  OMG!  We couldn't believe our eyes.  We're not just the type of people to park in handicap spots!!! We looked around and no sign to be seen except for a few spots down the road said, "the next 4 spots are for handicap parking."  So if you happened to be coming from the other direction, you would never see it!


What was supposed to be an nice afternoon out turned out to be not so nice!  We drove home in silence, both of us just mad!  And Jackson was mad to be back in the car!!