About two weeks after our first trip to the Netherlands we decided to go back to the country for a second go at it to see the last few destinations in the country. Our stops were pretty spread out, with the Keukenhof, Alkmaar and Hoorne being on the West end of the country and Thorn and Maastricht on the East. We decided to split the driving distance roughly in the middle by staying in Eindhoven.
I'm actually going to start with the small town of Thorn though, which makes this post a little out of order since we visited it on our last day. But its the town that I'm inspired by the most at the moment I suppose. It was a brief stop over for us on our way to Maastricht. We walked the town and had breakfast at restaurant that specializes in thin savory and sweet pancakes before going on to the larger city of Maastricht.
I had a savory pancake of onion, bacon and cheese for breakfast and my wife had a sweet strawberry and custard one. In the photo it looks like a pizza but its actually a pancake. We each had a coffee as well of course.
Unfortunately, my luck had run out though on our second trip because I couldn't find a good cappuccino anywhere that we went. For some reason they just didn't compare to the quality of our previous time in the country. If you read my last post then the photo above is exactly what I was talking about that you don't want to see in a cappuccino - there is no microfoam, just a thick layer of frothed milk with the espresso poured through it.
It's not the end of the world by any means, its just a small but noticeable difference for the coffee snobs out there, like me :D
My wife had her first latte for the day. I'm emphasizing "first" because she didn't like it in my last post when I said that she drinks multiple lattes per day.
But this is my blog so I have all the power here.
Whaaahahaha *(evil laughter).
😈
Hi Honey 👋
Thorn is a very small village in the province of Limburg. It's situated in the Southeastern part of the country along the Meuse river.
Its known for its white washed brick homes that are located in the center of the town and is sometimes fittingly referred to as the "White village."
As you can see in the photos, its very white. Ummm Duh!
The white buildings look pristine and are actually pretty cool though. It's just a small thing, but it really gives the town a lot of character.
The town was born in the year 990 when a monastery for noblewomen was established there. Some of the old residence buildings can still be visited there to this day. The Noblewomen's monastery attracted powerful women to the budding city and soon the entire region actually became ruled by women. At the time, most of Europe was ruled by men so it was no small feat that the region around Thorn was ruled by women for over 800 years.
Today there is still a large cathedral in the center of the small city with several restaurants and hotels surrounding it.
We had our breakfast in the restaurant on the corner in the photo above. It had a great view of the church from the terrace.
Here it is again from the front.
There is a reason that all of the buildings are painted white in town and its actually a really interesting story.
In the 18th century all of the noblewomen fled the town to escape a French invasion that was being led by Napoleon. After they had left, a large number of poor people moved into town to fill the vacancy.
When the French took control, they enacted a tax on the residents that was based on the size of a homes windows.
Being quite poor, the residents of the town couldn't afford to pay the heavy taxes, so they bricked up their windows to make them smaller.
Then they painted the entire house white to hide the difference between the old bricks and new.
Its pretty smart when you think of it. I've seen bricked up windows in different places before but I never really understood the reasoning behind it.
Today the windows in town appear to be a fairly standard size from what I could tell.
Sparking my own curiosity, I decided to google why the French imposed a tax on windows and since I know that you're dying to know as well, I'm going to share the information here with you.
Apparently a window tax was common starting in the 1600's in the countries of France, Britain and Scotland and remained in effect up until the 1900's.
At the time, income tax was considered to be a dirty practice but the nations needed the revenue to fund their varying campaigns. As such, they decided to tax a households windows.
The theory was that larger and more prosperous households would have more windows in their homes, as well as larger ones to boot. Taxing windows ultimately became a way to tax wealthier people.
What's more interesting was that windows around that time became a sort of status symbol because only wealthy people could afford them. Many windows and/or large windows, ultimately became a demonstration of wealth and social status among the people.
Some people even painted windows onto the outside of their homes to give the appearance of owning them in an attempt to increase their status. I didn't see any evidence of this in Thorn but I thought it was an interesting tidbit of history.
The church is one of the main features in town to see. Its large and imposing and was built as far back as the 10th century.
Parts of the interior were built or refurbished later on in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The church could be seen from several different streets and we walked around it to get a glimpse at all angles.
One of the last things that we saw of interest was this bronze statue of a naked family playing music together. I don't know the meaning or story behind it but thought that it was sort of different and interesting. I imagine them to be a family of hippies. Only hippies walk around and play music naked in front of their kids - but no judgement on my part (each to their own).
Let me know your thoughts in the comments. What did you think of the town or the window tax. Do you play music or walk around your kids naked? Actually, that last part was a joke. I don't want to know if you do.