Meandering Maastricht

 Friday,  September 18

After cruising all through the night, we arrived in Maastricht, The Netherlands this afternoon around 1pm. It was a sunny day and we thought we might spend the morning on the top deck but it was closed. There were many low bridges along our voyage that our ship barely made it under so the railings on the top deck had to be down in order to finagle it. If the railings couldn’t  be up,  a person certainly couldn’t  be standing on top!

The original itinerary had us arriving in Cologne, Germany today instead of Maastricht.  However, due to low water levels we could not make it to Cologne. Instead, Viking had arranged for local tour guides to take groups on a walking tour of the  Maastricht.

Our guide’s name was Karen and she was a resident of Maastricht. This town is on the Meuse River and is very quaint with cobblestone streets. It was established in 50 BC by the Romans and you can still see remnants of the stone walls that surrounded the city many years ago. It is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. Maastricht was really bustling and has many shops. There was a market going on in one of the squares but shopping was not built into the tour. There were lots of fabric and sewing notions but no time to shop. However, Karen managed to buy some socks in record time whithout losing our group. 

At one time Maastricht had over 50 churches. Not many people go to churches anymore so many have converted them into pubs and restaurants, etc. Karen the tour guide took us to a church that is now a popular book store called Book Store Dominicanen.  I would have loved to spend some time there too.

We did have time at the end of the tour to walk around by ourselves so we found an outdoor cafe for a beer and shopped around a bit. 

Unfortunately, because of the low water levels, we have to pack our bags tonight so that they can be transported to another ship outside of Frankfurt to  continue our voyage. We have two options to choose from to get ourselves there. We chose the option to tour Cologne, Germany but it looks like we will be spending around 5 hours on the tour bus. On the plus side we will be getting to see some of the countryside.