The Zuidwillemsvaart

Tuesday morning we were underway along the Zuidwillemsvaart, a canal that links southern Holland with eastern Belgium and then ends back in far southern Holland at the city of Maastricht. For the first time we dealt with more locks that opening bridges and we shared the canal with some big commercial barges. In these locks the smaller enter the lock first and get far over to the side and then the commercial boat enters the center of the lock. We followed this guy through four locks.



Takes some very careful driving.

We spent the night on a disused arm of the canal that has been turned into a temporary mooring spot for boats in transit and, the next day, entered some of our first big river locks.


Yes, we are going all the way up to the top!

We also passed more interesting Dutch architecture. There was a line of four of these apartment buildings along the canal. We called them toaster buildings.



Later that afternoon -



We sat through major thunderstorms that afternoon in the small Belgian town of Bocholt. Luckily just steps from the small harbor was a major beer store. Seemed the most logical thing to do in Belgium was to start sampling the beers. Careful! Can you tell which one has 11% alcohol?