We drove down Friday afternoon after their arrival and planned to stay for 2 nights in a bed and breakfast.
Maastricht is the only place in Holland whose landscape has some contour. While the hills are pretty small, it is still a welcome sight from the north. If you have been following the blog, then you can look at Holland as the geographical antithesis to Sorrento.The neat thing about Maastricht is that the old town center is still surrounded by the original fortress wall. Canons line the wall in some areas and most of the ramparts are still in tact. When we walked from our apartment to the city center, we walked past a “moat” and through the fortress gate.
As you can see from the pictures, even the people of Maastricht knew better than to let me into the city. I knocked, pulled, and yelled, but still no one answered. That probably comes as no surprise to most of you…Every city has its unique features. In Maastricht we ran across this working water mill. It operated very similar to the windmills that we saw in Zaanse Schans. As you can see from the pictures, Mom, Aunt Sherry, and Amanda were very intrigued by the water mill.
Downtown Maastricht was pretty cool. It is a huge cobblestone area surrounded by a big church, town buildings, restaurants, and a couple of hotels. While eating on Saturday night we saw a wedding in the center pavilion. There wasn’t a lot of entertainment, but it was fun to just hang out, relax, and talk… I don’t think we do enough of that anymore. In fact, that is probably something I find most difficult: sitting and relaxing. It really irritates Amanda when I can’t sit still or need a constant stream of things to keep me busy. Maybe Europe will cure my Attention Deficit Disorder.
On Saturday morning we got up around 9am (early by European standards) and embarked on the Maastricht city walk. It was kind of like the Freedom Trail in Boston. You followed the “red-line” on the map and walked passed all the historical sites. Most of the sites had an information plaque telling you why it was famous. The only difference is all the plaques were in Dutch. Needless to say, we didn’t learn much on the walk (but, we did enjoy the sites).
Probably the best part of the trip (for me) was Fort St. Peter and the Caves. In the past Maastricht was a strategic city because of its proximity to Germany, France, and Belgium. Based on the stories, Maastricht seemed to be under a constant siege from 1200 – WWII.
Under Fort St. Peter literally lie hundreds of miles of limestone tunnels. The limestone was mined to fuel the construction industry: to build castles and walls and stuff. During a war / siege, the people of Maastricht would retreat to the fortress and hide in the caves. No one could find their way through the caves without a map.
In fact, our guide told us a couple of really good stories about the cave history. The first is a sad one, but illustrates how dangerous the caves can be. He said that every year the guides will get a call because somebody’s son(s) have not come home. Nine times out of ten it is because the children have gotten lost in the caves. Approximately 25 years ago 2 boys were lost (and eventually died) for 3 weeks. He said one boy was 100 meters from the exit and the other was 60 meters away.
The second story is much less gruesome, but details the strategic importance of the caves. During one of the feuds between the Dutch and the French, the French military tried to destroy the fortress with explosives from the caves underneath. Apparently though, the French miscalculated the distance to the fortress and ignited the explosives 200 meters too far north. The French say that they only missed the mark because of an iron deposit layer in the caves messed up their compasses. The Dutch agree and say “it just proves you should never follow the French”. During that battle the French never took Fort St. Peter.
The last story comes from WWII. During WWII the Germans were walking all over Europe and while Hitler was notably interested in preserving the world’s arts, buildings, etc., those against Hitler still tried to hide the precious pieces. As a result, famous art like Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” and DaVinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks” were stored deep inside the caves.
You can see from the pictures below that there are a lot of drawings on the cave walls. These are charcoal sketches made to illustrate the stories on the tour and also a few random pieces by some local artists. The interesting point is that there are still several really old drawings. Keep in mind the charcoal picture would be easily erased if someone wiped their hand across it.
We left Maastricht Sunday morning and decided to drive back home via a different route. This time we drove through Belgium and stopped in Antwerp for lunch. By luck, we parked just a block from the town center.
We walked to the center and were shocked with what we found; it was beautiful. Everyone talks about how nice Brussels, Gent, and Brugge are, but no one says anything about Antwerp. If they are right and those other three are better than Antwerp, then we will be spending quite a bit of time in Belgium over the next 2-3 years.
The most notable item was the cathedral in the center. Services were just ending and outside the church, there was someone pretending to be a part of an existing statue (you will find these people everywhere – Houston, New York, London, and Antwerp). He/she was quite good at blending in.
We ended our short time in Antwerp by eating lunch at a local Italian restaurant. The food was delicious!
After leaving Antwerp, we headed toward Kinderdijk (just outside of Rotterdam). Kinderdijk is the location of 19 old style windmills that were used to pump water out of the lowlands. It’s actually really neat to see all of those windmills in one place. Spectacular!
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