Adventures in the Netherlands: Maastricht

On a cold, rainy Sunday morning, what does a group of four people decide to do? Get on a train for four hours to Maastricht, of course...

The plan was to leave with the first train that would get us there but due to some unfortunate events (mainly someone was late and had the wrong time on their watch) we left about an hour after that. So this means that we arrived in Maastricht around lunch time, after switching trains three times and travelling about 260 km.

Our first stop was the tourist office, right after passing the oldest bridge in the Netherlands: Sint Servaasbrug.

@ vrijthof

@ fort sint pieter

One of the things that lead us all the way to Maastricht was Grotten Sint Pietersberg (St. Peter's caves). I was quite sure what I was expecting, but we were greeted with caves made during the exploration of limestone in the area. There were, initially, about 80000 corridors, which have been reduced to 20000. The guide (in English) explained things really well and even told us stories about how people how hid down there during a French invasion in the 1700's and also during WWII.

map of the caves

At one point, the guide asked the group if they wanted to do something exciting. Everyone replied affirmatively, and the result was us all walking along a wall, without any light surrounding us. It was pitch black! But it was definitely fun to experience and walk about 200 meters without seeing anything.

It was a little strange to do it after he told us about people who ventured into those caves years and years ago, and could not find their way out...