St Pietersberg Caves, Maastricht

We headed out on the 10am sailing this morning after the market to the St Pietersberg Caves and were the only two passengers on this mammoth (~30 metre long) boat.

The journey was beautiful on the river with some spectacular views along the way.

It took about 20 minutes until we docked, watched the boat depart (with vapour trails in the background),

and then started the walk up the hill to a cafe where a guide then picked us up for a tour.

He said the tour is usually in dutch, but since the only other group of people spoke english (they were from Taiwan) he would do it in english. He did however apologise that he didn’t know much english; it turns out he is very fluent and had wicked sense of humour.

From the cafe we had a scenic 7 minutes walk (mostly uphill) to the beginning of the caves that even included poppies.

Inside the caves, they were pitch black and only lit by whatever light we brought with us.

The caves were initially built in the 1200’s (I think) and been deepened over time.

The lines on the rock formation below were from the axels on the horse drawn carriages as they entered and exited the caves.

During World War II the caves were also used for shelter and an architect (who could obviously draw) drew pictures in various parts of the cave to enable people to find their way around.

There is bizarrely also advertising in the caves.

The trip is well worth it and our guide was absolutely superb. I think however we were lucky to get an english tour.

The trip back on the boat was a lot noisier as were accompanied by a school trip.