Greetings from hot Heerlen!

It was 30 C here today! I asked our host if there was any sort of middle temperature around here, and he said no! Robert is enjoying the heat but you can imagine what I think of it! Today we took 3 trains to Sevenum. KAREN, you asked about train passes. We bought ours from our BCAA travel agent back home, as you can't get them here. You can buy seperate tickets but it's expensive. We are traveling all over by train so it's cheaper for us to by the EurRail pass. It was nearly $3,000.00 total for all 3 of us. That includes 8 days of travel in Europe, and 8 days of travel in the UK. You can go anywhere on a day's stamp within a 24 hour period. The first time you use it, you must get it verified by the station agent. After that you initial each day yourself. Sometimes a conductor or agent comes and checks if you have a ticket and sometimes they don't. I was surprised at that. We were only checked for our bus tickets once. It's 9:09 pm here and the sun is setting behind me, as I look out on the tiny wild flower garden in the back. I'd dearly love to live here. I can highly recommend this B & B! It's called Guesthouse #16 in Heerlen. It's wonderful.I love the old sitting room I'm in. A clock is softly ticking.The traffic in the front is quite loud but stops around midnight. Today we met our distant cousins, Leo and Pia Guerts. Leo has done a lot of research on the Houben family, back to the 1500's. He works in the archives in Sevenum. They picked us up at the tiny train station, and we went to their house for a delicious Dutch lunch. We visited together and then he drove us into the countryside to see 4 old houses that Robert's relatives used to live in. That was neat! We stopped for ice cream before he took us to the train station again. We had to leave early to visit another aunt, but the trains were so HOT (some had no a/c) that we didn't meet her because to get to her we had to take a hot bus and I refused as I was way too HOT. We washed up at our room and went to the same Chinese restaurant that Aunt Jo had taken us to the first night. It was good food and we walked to a little ice cream place close by and sat in the air conditioned room and enjoyed good Dutch ice cream. I normally don't like ice cream, but you have to taste Dutch! Mmmmm....