Friday morning we dropped the dogs off at the kennel and hit the road. The drive up, with the exception of some traffic, was pretty uneventful. When we got to the hotel we unpacked and hit the town. We've been to Maastricht three times over the past three years, and it's not a large town, so I'm starting to become somewhat familiar with the area. There wasn't much going on Friday night, so we took the time to just walk around town. We knew on Sunday we wanted to hit the Limestone caves outside of town, so we started off by heading to the tourist information center to get tickets. While there I noticed a brochure for a Beer Specialty shop. It was hard to tell if this was a store or a bar, so we decided to head across the river to take a look.
It didn't take long to find the place, and it turns out it was a bar. We sat down, had a few drinks, and talked briefly with the bartender. She made it a point to describe every beer we ordered, which was interesting...she definitely knew her beer. After that we found a place nearby that had GREAT kebobs for dinner. We wandered around for a bit, but it quickly became evident that Maastricht was going to be a lot more quiet on Queens Day then we anticipated. We eventually made our way back to a bar right next to our hotel where they had live music playing that night.
The next morning we got up early for breakfast, and then hit the Vrijthof Square, which was right next to our hotel. The Dutch have permits for EVERYTHING...including selling things on the street. The one day a year they allow anyone to sell anything they want without a permit is on Queens Day, so the Vrijthof Square had every day citizens out there, and was basically one giant garage sale.
They also had some opening ceremonies, which included them firing off a HUGE cannon. We were close to it, and on the pictures page there is a video of it, but it doesn't do it justice...it was so loud you literally felt the pressure of the cannon shot all over your body. Once the opening ceremonies concluded, it became a giant fest for kids. At that point we decided to walk around town to see what else we could find. We came across what appeared to be a small wine shop, but Shanna said she recognized it and that they were actually a tiny vineyard and they gave tours. We walked inside and asked about the tours, but the guy said since it was Queens Day they weren't doing them. Then he said, jokingly, if we promised to buy a bottle of wine he'd take us around himself for a short tour. We said sure, and it ended up being fascinating. They import their wine from France in plastic barrels so no flavor is passed to the wine, then they put them in wood barrels and age them. They bottle it when it's ready, and sell in their stores. In their backyard area they do have a tiny vineyard, but it only yields about 100 bottles a year. He said it was more for hobby then anything else. He showed us that part, where they bottle it, and took us down in the cellar area to see where they barreled the wine. Apparently a lot of local businesses have them store their wine in their cellar since they don't have the space in their hotel.
Once the tour was over we bought a few bottles of wine, approx 40 Euros worth, and gave him a 50, telling him to keep the change because we appreciated the tour. He was grateful, and told us to come back later that afternoon. That's when they open their sampling room up. Normally people pay to sample the wine, but he said he'd let us do it for free.
We left the wine store and headed over to the Market Square. The Market Square area is where we stayed the last time we were in Maastricht, and it had shops all over the place. We spent part of the afternoon walking around the shops, and stopped occasionally to try some local beer. We eventually headed back to the wine shop for sampling. The way it worked is they give you what appears to be a hotel key card with however much money you put on it stored on the card. Then you walk up to the sampling machine, put your card in, put your glass in front of the bottle you want to sample, push the button, and it gives you a sample and deducts the cost from the card. The sample prices ranged from 25-80 cents, and he gave us a card with 5 Euros worth on it. It was really neat how it all worked and the wine was delicious.
After we were done there we found a place for dinner where we could watch some of the dance shows going on. By this time it was starting to get dark, so we decided to head back to that specialty beer bar we had gone to the night before. We had gone earlier in the day on Friday, so with us going a little later this time, it was a little busier. We still were able to get a seat right at the bar, though, and ended up having a great time. The bar was filled with regular locals who were in a talkative mood. The bartenders turned out to be the owners Peet and Mery. They were both extremely knowledgable about beer, so we would tell them what we liked and they'd surprise us. Each one they brought was delicious. We eventually called it a night and headed back to our hotel.
The next morning we checked out around 11, but our scheduled tour of the caves outside of town didn't start until 2pm. The last time we visited Maastricht we'd accidentally stumbled upon a town nearby called Valkenburg. We had seen the ruins of a destroyed castle there, but hadn't gone to it. This time, since we had 3 hours to kill, we decided to check it out. The castle was first built in 1160, and was destroyed in battle in 1670. It is the only castle ever built in The Netherlands. These days you can take a tour and walk around, with pictures posted everywhere of what the section you were in would have looked like before it was destroyed. The city of Valkenburg was first settled by the Romans 2,000 years ago because of the large deposits of something called Mergel, which is a type of stone used back then in construction. Mergel is extremely easy to carve and shape, so inside the ruins they had a workshop for kids to make things out of the Mergel.
As you'll see from the pictures page, they must have had small feet back then...the steps literally only came out to half my foot. After we'd seen the ruins we walked into town a bit and found an area called Lourdesgrot. It was the side of a large rock, and had statues of Mary, an altar, and seats in front. We didn't know what it was at the time, but I looked into it when we got home. It's actually a replica built of the area in Lourdes, France, where Mary is believed to have appeared.
By this time it was 1:15, so we headed out to the caves area. This tour was fascinating. The caves were first opened in the 11th century. The stone they had down there was extremely soft because of how much moisture was in the cave air. It made excavation easy. When the stone was brought to the surface it had no more moisture and hardened considerably. The buildings of Maastricht back then were built using the stone from these caves. About 100 years ago modern technology created more reliable building materials and the caves were no longer necessary. The farmers that owned the land suddenly lost a large part of their income, so they decided to open it up to tours. There were various paintings all over the inside of the cave that they did with charcoal. Due to the high moisture level, paint wasn't an option. The guide also told us that because of the coldness and dampness a human being could only survive for 40 hours down there before succumbing to hypothermia.
The guide also told us about a group of farmers who survived for three weeks in the tunnels during a French invasion a few hundred years back by building an oven. They would constantly keep it lit, which kept them warm. Eventually the French soldiers found them, but did not kill them. Instead they just took their livestock that they had kept down in the caves with them. They eventually were taken in by monks in the area, which is why their story is known. The farmers were not educated, but the monks were and they recorded their story.
During the entire tour we had three lamps we carried around. There were no lights at all built into the caves. At one point the tour guide stopped and told us to put our hands on the left wall. He said he was going to collect all the lamps, and was going to walk a distance. He said when the lights went out and we could no longer see anything, start walking with our hand on the wall. He said it would lead us to him. He also said that anyone who didn't want to do that could just walk with him, but everyone stayed behind. I've never seen such darkness in my life. It was literally a complete absence of light. We eventually all made it back to him though and it turned out to be kind of neat. He had us do that to illustrate how much trouble you'd be in if you were in the caves without a light source.
Once the tour was over we hit the road and headed home. Normally I'd leave it at that, but we did see one interesting thing on the drive home. We passed a car on the road that had Texas license plates. I don't mean on display in their rear window, I mean it was attached to their car and was the only license plate displayed, there were no European plates. I don't know why they did that, but it was definitely not something I ever expected to see.
Despite Queens Day not being anywhere near the celebration it was in Amsterdam, we still ended up having a great time. While Salzburg was by far our favorite city that we visited, our favorite country is The Netherlands. The Dutch people are the friendliest people we've met, from the Wine store employee who gave us a guided tour just because to the locals who wanted to talk about beer, America, and anything else that came up in the Take One bar. If you ever have a chance to visit The Netherlands, do it...you won't regret it.
My next post won't be until next Friday at the earliest because I'm leaving for Rome on Monday. I'll have pictures and a blog post late next week or early the week after. For pictures, you can click here or any picture in the post above.
