Radtour Radurlaub entlang der Maas

The restday in Namur turned out as one of the best days of the cycling holiday. It's nice to ride one's bike, but relaxing in a lovely city like Namur is also great. It's the capital of Wallonia, and we had a look at the parliament building on the riverbank from the outside. Afterwards we parked our bikes in the city centre and went for a lazy stroll in the old town before taking the aerial cableway up to the mighty fortress, which soars on a rock, squeezed in between two rivers, the mouth of the Sambre and the Meuse. It's dispersed into many buildings and includes a vast underground area with milelong corridors, we visitied on a guided tour later in the day. Before that we enjoyed a lunch of grilled sausages with a nice view of the Meuse valley southwards. The weather had turned nice again with a lot of sunshine and warm temperatures. Our first sight was the museum, which tells the history of Namur. Quite a comprehensive matter, and one felt the wish of the Walloons to present their capital in the best possible light. The exhibition began, oddly enough, with the creation of mother Earth 4.5 billion years ago, when a huge cloud of gasses were condensed into - Namur surrounded by the remainder of the earth! Then we submerged into it and learned about the logistics of a medieval fortress before emerging from the depth into the sunshine and sailing down into the city centre again via the cableway. Now we were in for beer, lots of beer, dinner and watching football in a restaurant on the central square, where football fans from many countries were gathered. Englishmen and Italians were the easiest ones to spot, as their countries were to play in the final of the UEFA Euro 2020 tonight. It went all the way to a penalty shoot out, where England blew all their chances by muffing three penalties. This made the Italian fans ("tifosis") to go nuts in a very loud celebration of the European triumph, while we retreated to our hostel on our bikes to a well deserved night's sleep.