What Cool Caves...

Our fall break began with 2 nights in Maastricht, Holland's oldest and most southern town. It wasn't as quaint as I'd hoped, but was impressed with the local museums -- art, natural history, and architecture. The high point (literally and figuratively) of our visit was a tour of the St. Pietersberg Caves. We took a short boat ride outside of the city, then hiked up a hill to the mouth of the man-made cave shown here. The cave dates back to Roman times for excavations of marl, a building stone. At one time there were over 20,000 passages for 220 kilometers; today there are still 17K accessible. During World War II, it was used as a bomb shelter. Our 1-hour tour was entirely in Dutch so didn't learn much of the history, but was amazed to see works of art on many surfaces (unfortunately, the digital camera's still in the shop, so no photos from the inside). We were especially thankful the old man who led the tour remembered his way back out since there weren't any Exit signs or fancy lighting like in the US.