plenary Holland: Maastricht
The New Old World A welcoming medieval city on the Meuse river (right), Maastricht offers a variety of unique venues — including, right on the border with Belgium, Château Neercanne (above).
exhibition space and upgrade its tech- nological infrastructure. Then a guide from Den Haag Mar-
keting collected me for a fast-moving tour of the old city. After two flawless summer days, the sky had reverted to Holland’s usual iron-gray ceiling, but the weather was still mild as we hopped a tram that took us into the heart of town. Our first stop: the Hotel Des Indes, a 92-room property with 4,200 square feet of meeting space that was built as a palace in 1858. Gorgeously, almost sin- fully appointed, the lemon-yellow grand dame sits on Lange Voorhout square, a famous part of The Hague’s diplomatic community that’s home to numerous embassies, including those of the United States and Great Britain. In just a few short blocks, we moved
from the city’s past into its glimmering present, visiting the cutting-edge con- temporary Hilton The Hague. Sharp and professional, the 195-room Hilton offers four boardrooms, five meeting rooms, and a 3,520-square-foot ballroom. That would be my last impression of The Hague, and it was perfect: a
22 PCMA CONVENE SEPTEMBER 2013
flawlessly modern venue perched amid history itself, a new idea standing on the shoulders of an old world. Little did I know on my train ride that afternoon, two- and-a-half hours southeast, to the very bottom of Hol-
land, that when it came to the old world, I had barely scratched the surface.
MAASTRICHT: ON THE BORDER Straddling the Meuse (known in Dutch as the Maas) river, up against the bor- der with Belgium, an easy stone’s throw from Germany, Maastricht is a medi- eval city whose ease and warmth belie a formidable network for business meet- ings. Both of those aspects revealed themselves quickly during my first day in the destination. The Maastricht Convention Bureau
(
maastrichtconventionbureau.com) picked me up at the train station and took me right to the Maastricht Exhi- bition & Congress Centre (MECC Maastricht). The sleek facility has more than 320,000 square feet of exhibition
space, 30 breakout rooms, and two audi- toriums that combined can seat 1,650 people. Just as impressive, MECC Maas- tricht is directly next to the Maastricht Health Campus, an ambitious complex of clinics, research labs, and educa- tion institutions that offer a wealth of resources for medical conferences. From there we left town, driving
through the intensely green Jeker valley and up to Château Neercanne, a 17th- century castle in the hills overlooking Belgium that today offers a variety of unique event spaces, including Baroque gardens, terraces, conference and ban- quet rooms, a restaurant, and, burrowed into the cliffs behind the château, a series of cool, atmospheric wine cellars. Château Neercanne is one of a hand- ful of properties owned by Camille
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