Lazy river, busy conference

The last two days in Maastricht have been quite nice. Michael has had a few busy days at the conference - he gave his talk, co-wrote another one, and is currently moderating a session, so he's got plenty to do! It's being a really productive meeting for him, and he's getting a lot of good career type advice and making some good connections, so the responsibility seems to be worth it.

I, on the other hand, have had a much slower pace. I spent most of Tuesday in the university library, and walking around the town a little bit. Today I went for a walk to the south of town and found a nature reserve with a bunch of trails along the river and marshlands. The river breaks into a number of little channels with a bunch of islands, and they're all connected with footbridges.

We've also been hanging out the Scott and his friends from Northwestern and Chicago, who are all very nice. They seem determined to taste every flavor of gelato available in the city, which is quite the quest, but I can't say that hasn't been fun tagging along!

The (rebuilt) original bridge - the first one from the 1300s was bombed during WWII.

I'm not a very big fan of geese... and these ones were really big.

A quaint tour boat. There are also transportation barges going up and down, so the river seems to be well trafficked.

I wanted the white butterfly to land on the purple flowers, but this was a nice shot, too.

So many flowers.

The nature reserve was a series of mini islands connected by foot bridges, and it was quite lovely.

Although very sunny. This is looking back up the river towards the city.