Well, we're finishing up our six day visit to Amsterdam but, before we tell you about our adventures here, we have to tell you all about our last week in Maastricht.
We went on a fascinating tour of the Caves beneath St. Pietersberg Hill, right outside of Maastricht. The caves were man made and were started in the 12th Century, initially, to use the limestone blocks as building material. It took 700 years to complete the caves which consisted of 20,000 passageways covering a total of 200 kilometers. They were used for various things throughout the centuries and were of great strategic importance during the dozens of sieges on the fortified city of Maastricht and were also used as a place of refuge for the inhabitants of Maastricht during wartime. Wells were dug in the caves, and a bakery, a chapel and a hospital ward were built. The photos I took didn't come out very well but I'm posting the one of the chapel.
At one point, to illustrate the absolute total darkness of the caves and how one could get completely disoriented if lost, the guide walked away with the lanterns, Well, after about two minutes, I was ready for him to come back and started to freak out a little. I would last about two seconds if I ever got lost in a cave.
On Saturday morning, we went over to the home of our new friends, John and Annelies, for coffee and "Vlaii," a scrumptious, local pastry that is made with whatever fruit is available. The one they served was Cherry and was fabulous. We then took a drive to see the little baby lamb that, since it's Mama rejected him, was being cared for by a couple who take in orphaned animals. Just one day shy of two weeks old, Zlo, as we named him, was thriving and adorable. Here are a few shots of this little lamb...that you'd swear was a goat. His breed is from Cameroon and they never get fur like the sheep that we're used to seeing.
On Sunday, John and Annelies took us to Liege, a beautiful town, half hour from Maatricht. The Sunday market there is something to see and we've posted a few photos. Then, after roaming the streets of the town and gazing, in awe, we went to see the train station that was designed by Calatrava. What a contrast. We love the photo of the train station looming over the old 13th century buildings of the town.
I'm having trouble getting the photos on so I'm going to finish the blog and add all of the photos at the end with captions.
It was rainy and cold (we thought we were in Seattle) the last few days of our stay but cleared up on Wednesday so we decided to drive to Bruges. The whole city is like a museum and looks like it came right out of Disneyland. This is where the film,"In Bruges," was made. We went on the Chocolate Factory tour....pretty fascinating, and did a canal cruise and just wandered around the city marveling at the architecture. It was a wonderful way to wrap up our two and a half weeks stay in Maastricht.
Our final adventure was finding a gas station to leave the car with a full tank. We thought the gas station was a few blocks from the house but, it turned out that this was a place that you needed a special card as there was never anyone there to tend to anything. So, after asking several people where the closest station was and being met with blank stares, one woman finally gave us instructions that we couldn't follow. We spotted a DSL truck and stopped to ask the driver for directions. He started giving us a novel of instructions and then, after observing our confused expression said..."why don't you just follow me." So, we proceeded on what seemed like an endless wild goose chase, through back streets and neighborhoods to finally end up at the gas station. We filled the tank to the horrifying amount of $90 and were very happy that this was the only road trip we took. We really had much more fun bicycling anyway, which we did almost every day. We then probably used up $10 worth of gas trying to find ourway back to the house. It was all pretty comical.
We spent Thursday packing and cleaning and tending to the animals and then caught the morning train ro Amsterdam where we have just spent a fantastic six days, which I'll tell you about in our next post.
So, when I hit the post button, I don't know what wierd things are going to show up in regard to the photos so I'm going to do another post with just photos and captions.
We went on a fascinating tour of the Caves beneath St. Pietersberg Hill, right outside of Maastricht. The caves were man made and were started in the 12th Century, initially, to use the limestone blocks as building material. It took 700 years to complete the caves which consisted of 20,000 passageways covering a total of 200 kilometers. They were used for various things throughout the centuries and were of great strategic importance during the dozens of sieges on the fortified city of Maastricht and were also used as a place of refuge for the inhabitants of Maastricht during wartime. Wells were dug in the caves, and a bakery, a chapel and a hospital ward were built. The photos I took didn't come out very well but I'm posting the one of the chapel.
