We had to get up bright and early today cos’ we were going with the family to a place near Maastricht, where they were having a golf weekend with Lee’s 2 other sisters and their husbands, together with a couple of other friends. It was their annual Golf Tournament, where they compete for the “Tjioe Cup”. Max, Mick and the dogs went to their grandparents’ place in Eindhoven to stay for the weekend, while we went along with Lee cos’ they had booked a room for us to stay for the weekend, and while they were golfing, we could visit the Southern part of Holland. The South is supposedly pretty because there’s rolling hills there, which are rare in Holland as it is mainly a flat land below sea level all throughout.
The 2 men in front
Us at the back.
Dry skin and poor lighting made our skin really bad 
Met Ien, Lee’s youngest sister, who was here to bring Max, Mick and the dogs over with them to their parents. The plan was that Lee would drop us off at Heerlem train station so we could take a train to Maastricht to spend the day as they would be playing golf and we would be really bored (doing nothing) in the golf resort.
Lee bought train tickets on our behalf from the machine cos’ we don’t have a card to pay for the tickets and we wouldn’t be able to understand Dutch, and sent us off on the train – and we were just in time despite taking pictures of our first train ride!
Our very first time on an intracity train! The train only has one level, as compared to the other trains which had 2 levels, with different structures. No idea why the difference.Maybe different companies? Not sure. We passed by beautiful countryside on the way to Maastricht, with little brown and white houses with the typical steep roofs, towering churches and grazing animals by the road. Apparently, the train has several stops before ending in Maastricht; but we didn’t realise that (and call it bad luck for us, that particular train didn’t have the voice over system to inform passengers what stops they were at) and got off a stop too early – and ended up at Meersen instead of Maastricht.
Not doing things the right way on the first try always seem to bring better/interesting surprises (or so we realized in the subsequent days). While poking around at Meersen train station and realising our mistake, we decided to explore the park near the station while waiting for the next train to arrive, which we presume that would travel to Maastricht in about another 20 minutes or so. A couple was taking wedding pictures in the park despite the slight drizzle, and the park had a lake with wild swans and ducks swimming about and coming up on shore and staring at you with unblinking eyes. An elderly couple was strolling there with their grandchild in a pram, and a few people were walking their dogs along the lake. Blissful sights from the simple things in life.
Little house selling flowers 
Flowers are aplenty here! Sweet!
Their wedding car!A beetle! heee
Church in the background
We heard a distant rumble of a train pulling into the station, and much to our horror – faster than we thought it would take. And RAN again (hahha. I do not understand why we are always running after things), through the park to the station and stopped the conductor from giving the go ahead to the train master to pull away from the station. Guess we were pretty lucky, cos’ the train did go to Maastricht, and the frequency of the train wasn’t too long and in no time we were on our way to Maastricht!
At Maastricht train station!
Many tracks of trains!
Jwen was fascinated by the fact that dogs were allowed on the trains. Wonder whether the dogs need a train tickets to get on the train.
We went into Albert Heijn To-Go to take a look and to get something to munch on during our day trip around Maastricht. We bought stroopwafles in the end, and munched on them while strolling around the city!That was also the snack that lasted us throughout the whole of next week. Haha. Talk about being budget travellers (as much as we try to that is). Albert Heijn is the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands. They have almost everything. Including pre-pack boxes of veg, with condiments and all things that can go along. Just buy a box, open them and throw them all into the pot, and you get a simple dinner. Not that we’ve tried it. But seems like everyone’s doing that! During lunch, its also convenient to just go in, grab some juice, bread, cheese, ham and what not, and then go onto the grasses or office for a simple lunch.
Interior of the train station.
So here we are, at Maastricht. A brief introduction of this pretty city.
The history of Maastricht goes back to c. 50 B.C when the Romans built a settlement by the main road, near a ford in the river. This makes Maastricht the oldest city of The Netherlands. The city’s name is derived from the Latin ‘Mosae Trajectum’. The site where the river Maas could be crossed. This settlement grew to become a walled castellum, which was abandoned towards the end of the 4th centuryA.D. Maastricht had its first outer walls built in 1229. Before long, the town was felt to be too cramped, and at the beginning of the 14th century construction work on a new series of walls was commenced. The city was important strategically, and had to withstand many attacks during its history.
Maastricht is located in the south of the Netherlands, close to Liege and Aachen. It has a more southern, relaxed atmosphere than other parts of The Netherlands, and attracts many international tourists not only for its rich history (founded by the Romans) but also for its beauty. the city center is split in two by the river Maas, with the train station located in the smaller part of the center.
The buildings in Maastricht are a combination of French and Belgian architecture, cos’ Maastricht is at the far south of the NL, which is near to Belgium. The name ‘Maastricht’ originated from the name of a French town as the culture of the town is still reflected in the way of life of the people there today; simple, relaxed and the penchant for sitting by cafes along the river, wining and dining;
and also for the River Maas that runs through the town of Maastricht.
It was easy to navigate and to find the VVV (stands for Information center for tourists) with the signboards around.
There was a flea market just outside of the station, and being curious people, we crossed the street to take a look. The flea market had people selling antiques, books, craftwork and even stacks of postcards that didn’t reach their destination at 30 cards for 5 Euros. Made us wonder whether postcards were ‘lost’ on purpose or were they accidentally lost, to explain why there were so many of those postcards in the flea market.
We continued to walk on the streets towards the VVV after going through the flea market.
Statue of the Founder (probably?) of the city.
A lone violinist plays at a corner of the street, seemingly un-noticed by those who walk past. Yet his beautiful music added a touch of class and beauty to the old city.
With globalization, you see the same shops in every country. Here in the Netherlands, Subway has Belgium Waffle, and I have in my hands the Netherlands Stroopwaffles. haha
Being silly in a foreign land. Youth is the only time for all these stupid things before we go full-fledge into adulthood and have to consider how we hold ourselves in front of people.
Alot of lavender for Grace !
As pharmacists to be, we are always attracted to Pharmacy related stuff.
Here there’s the Apotheek (pharmacy) and its kinda weird to see those red MacDonald’s Flags in this old city. Somehow it had that communism feel. And yup, McDonald’s in Maastricht. Add on to our MacDonald’s collection.
Roads of the city. Finally a picture without humans in it.
Its so hard to really stop and put our hearts into taking pictures for this trip since we’re always rushing from one place to another, or there’s always a sea of people/tourists around.
A seemingly chinese looking door.
Meandering the town and entering little alleyways led us to a church and a basic school (something like our primary school), and from there, we crossed the River Maas on one of the bridges that spans the whole body of water that seems to stretch out to just about forever, save for the bridges that cut an awning arch over the horizon.
A basic school, equivalent to our primary school.Its interesting in that the schools in The Netherlands have vacations at staggered times. For example, the Northern part would begin holidays two weeks ahead, then the west, followed by the South and then the East and every year they would rotate this arrangement, just for the sake of ensuring that there’s not alot of congestion on the roads with everyone going for holidays.
Standing on one side of the River Maas, we took a panorama shot of the area.
On the extreme left of the picture, there’s a bridge. So we crossed the bridge and went up to another side of the river.
The bridge was built in the 19th century by the Romans and was bombed during the war. The one that we were on was rebuilt around 1950s-1960s (I think)
The view of another bridge from the bridge we were on.
And there we were; at the heart of one of the most beautiful towns in Holland, and just about the rare few places in the entire country where softly rolling hills can be seen in the far distance.
The city central with all the cafes and big shopping malls
We went into the VVV and got a map of Maastricht for 1.25euro so as to know what we can do there. The person at the counter was nice enough to point out to us the things we could do, introduced the St Pietersburg caves, and guided us on how to get to the pier. Headed down to the pier and got ourselves tickets on a river cruise to go to St Pietersburg Caves. Before the boat ride, someone took a picture of us and wanted to sell it to us at 8 euros after the whole journey. Found that rather stupid because it was just a picture of two of us with no significant background or special mascot, and secondly, they rather throw our picture away instead of giving it to us despite the fact that it had already been developed. I personally think that it would make more sense for them to give us that photo and to charge for subsequent pieces that we re-developed.
The boat. Again it was a mad run to the boat as we got our tickets at exactly 1 pm when the boat was suppose to leave. And that was also the only trip of the day with English guided tour.
The boat was rather huge, and it has a restaurant like café lounging area in it for the passengers to order drinks from the bar and enjoy their beverages while sailing down the river with the commentary running in Dutch and English throughout the journey.
Again , dogs can go up on the boat!
Tickets for our river cruise and into the St Pietersburg Caves.
It was just a short 15 min journey on the cruise with the cool wind brushing against our faces,and we had to get off at the first stop.
And then we had to take a short walk to the meeting point where we waited for approximately half an hour for the tour guide to come and bring us on the hourly guided walk.
We had to wait in the slight drizzle for the walking tour of the caves to begin (at 1.50pm), and when the guide came, we walked a short distance through fields and miniature farms with am old man farming in the sun to reach the entrance of the caves.
The first sculpture we saw was this. Not too sure what it was.
After being ‘picked up’ by the tour guides, we took a short walk through the forest… saw some countryside scenery and reached the entrance of the cave.
Our tour guide for the English guided tour at the entrance of the cave. He’s really good, clear and quite humourous!
After dividing the crowd into the Dutch and the English groups, we all went into the caves.
The famouse ‘St. Pietersberg’ caves are the result of centuries of excavation of marl, a building stone. What we now see is an enormous labyrinth of more than 20,000 passages. The stone-hewers have left their marks. On the walls are interesting inscriptions, some extremely old; artists too, have been at work here. During the many sieges Maastricht has suffered, and also during the last world war, local inhabitants used the passages as a shelter; some of the emergency provisions are still to be seen.
The temperature in the caves is 9-10 degrees Celcius; visitors are therefore advised to take a cardigan, pullover or coat with them. The round-trips, which last about an hour, are led by official VVV Tourist Office guides. Two sections of the labyrinths of Mount St. Pieter are open to the public
The cave stretches for 200km underground and is 600m wide approximately. It spans all the way from The Netherlands to Belgium, where one part of it is. In the tunnel, it is 100% darkness, 90% humidity and there are limestone quarry at the back. The passageways were constructed as a shelter for the villages in times of War as the poor villagers living outside of the City were not allowed to enter the fortresses of the City during War, so they had to find alternatives. Then the caves were mined for limestone, chalk and granite for construction purposes, and later they were used by artists to express their artworks as they could not afford to hold exhibitions in the City. Sundays were days for the rich to go to Church and to parade in the City Square in their best clothes; but for the artists, they headed into the caves with their lamps and material to paint. The tour guide joked that ladies beware of limp hair coz it’s humid inside (probably coz he saw my curry puff hair).Without a lamp, you can absolutely see nothing and hence its better to follow closely with the tour guides. It has been shown in an experiment that if you are put in absolute darkness for 15 hours, you would probably die out of exasperation and the body will be disoriented. Eventually, you will give up struggling and just think that its the end of your life. And death would eventually happen, probably.Apparently, many people have died or never have been found after they entered the caves, either out of mischief or during work (mining etc) and so now the caves are closed and only visitors are allowed in with guides.
Following the tour guide in the darkness.
Stopping by sites to listen to the tour guide’s explanations of the pictures in the caves.
The cave was a shelter for the villagers during wars. Hence there was a chapel, shops that lined the tunnel, clinics and so on so forth within the cave. The chapel here was a testimony of the village back then. And a few years back, someone from the Netherlands Tourist Board got married there with thousands of candles on the floor. Apparently if you wish to get married there, it is possible to do so too. romantic huh. 
The black marks on the ceiling shows the presence of the stone hewers many years back. Those were marks made by the kerosene lamps which were hung on the ceiling as the stone hewers worked from top down, row by row.
Since artists love to go to the cave to do their paintings, it was no wonder that we saw the works of many and one interesting one was this by Salon, who actually had his ‘own’ museum by cordoning a part of the cave and carving it such that it look like a chamber.
The door to the ‘museum’ of Salon
Salon’s works of beautiful Greek Goddesses.
Other paintings (not exclusive) in the caves.
From top left clockwise.
1. The painter wanted to show his father working in the caves and always having to bend his back.
2. Because the rocks were soft (when not exposed to air), it was easy to carve them to get the man sculpture. The guide joked that he was the model for that sculpture.
3. Religious paintings.
4. Because many people visited the caves on Sunday back then, the companies thought it’d be good to do advertisement within the caves. Hence we saw the advertisement for margarine.
5. Advertisement for van houten chocolate.
6. They found the fossil of some creatures on the wall in the cave. Not too sure what was it though.
The guide (as described in lonely planet ) asked if we wanted the easy route, the extreme one, or the partially extreme one. Because there was a little boy in the group, hence the decision was to go for the partially extreme one. The guide informed us later that if we wanted to go for the extreme one it’d mean we would go into the caves to explore in total darkness, without the guide. The partially extreme one was at a particular part of the cave, the guide would go elsewhere with his lamp and we were to line up against the wall, and using the wall as a guide, move along the entire square pillar in darkness.
Here’s a video of part of the guided tour in the cave.
The tour was soon over and it was back onto the boat for the remaining of the boat cruise before reaching the main city again.
XF fascinated by the cuteness of the small safety boat.
Toured the city and did window shopping. We saw this shop Pipoos which sold all kinds of craft material. Super pretty. We were both tempted to buy, but we decided against it. Photos shall make us happy ..
Us with our personal agenda of taking a picture with the McDonalds’ of all cities.
presenting, the McDonald’s of Masstrict
The former Dominicans Church is one of the oldest Gothic churches in Netherlands and it dates back to the 13th century.
The corridor of another church that we went in to take a look.
Continued to stroll through the city. What better ways can there be to feel the city more?
And we saw this. Notice anything strange?
Most of them sit on one side of the table (ie. the side that faces the road/sun). The difference between people who have the sun everyday and people who has it once a year .
We proceeded to heerlem to wait for Lee and Eus to pick us up at the train station to go to the golf range for dinner with their family.
Our accomodation for the night was at Golf Residence Hotel. Its located in the middle of no where except for golf ranges. Not much entertainment except for golf courses and hence it can be understood why the children did not follow their parents.
Our room is the second floor with the balcony.
Excited at our first hotel room, we took a series of silly photos. hahah presenting our model with our room!
It’s almost like the size of a 3 room flat, equipped with a kitchen, a dining area, a living room, 2 basins in the shower room, a bathtub, a balcony, and two tvs. Very much thankful to Lee for getting us a room for the weekend
Dinner at the restaurant was an atas affair. With wine, and 3 course meal. Starter was a salad with poached egg, bacon and some veg. The main course was a meat patty with potato and dessert was strawberry pie with ALOT of cream on top. Super sinful. And then it was a night at the table seeing how their family interacted, laughed the night away. We were seated opposite Lee’s brother-in-law who was super chatty and talked to us about many things, of which, the Italian style of drinking coffee. In the morning, they drink cappucino, in the afternoon they drink normal coffee, and at night before going to bed they drink expresso. Hence, after dinner when everyone ordered Cappucino, latte or normal coffee after dinner, he proclaimed that was the wrong way to do things. Haha. Interesting to learn about that. We have fallen into the land of koffie,thee and more of those. Where koffie seems to be the equivalent of water.
Both of us were tired and we slept soon after we returned to the room. Buffet breakfast in the hotel the next morning. After slowly enjoying the warm cuppa of koffie, we went back to our room to do planning on where we would like to see in Netherlands in the subsequent weeks. Decided that we’d not want to stay all our time in Harlem in the hotel room, we decided to venture out to take a stroll. Sadly, there was no where that we’d go since there was nothing but greens down the entire stretch of roads and we had no idea exactly where we were and what buses to take (being all new in the environment). So we took a 100m stroll down the road, and took pictures with flowers, before venturing to the roof top of the hotel, to take picture.
Nothing on the roads! We are going crazy with boredom. oOps. haha
Staircase to the roof top from the outside of the building. Xfen called this ‘The Stairway to Heaven’.
View of the golf course from the roof top 
ducks swimming in the pond.
Flowers on the road. Reminds Jwen of 2 songs.
“故事的小黄花…”
and
“路边的野花,你不要摘”
We had spring roll (a super duper huge one), pineapple with chicken, fu rong egg and keropok. Interesting to see keropok here in chinese food. Their food is kinda influenced by Indonesian food since Indonesia was a Dutch colony too. Hence, it was great to be able to taste sambal and chilli sauce, although their very hot isn’t exactly hot by Singapore’s standard.
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