Belgium; Tuesday, 27 June, 2006

With a hearty breakfast inside me, I headed off to the station to catch the train to Maastricht. So at a little after 10:30 I entered country number five for the week (though I don't know if you can really count France as at no point did I go through it at anything less than 100KmpH!

I had a bit of a wander around the centre of the city before wandering down to the Mass to catch a boat tour along the river. The tour includes a stop about halfway along to take a tour of the caves at St Pietersburg. The caves have been formed by the mining of the limestone since the Roman times. Today the total number of passageways total over 200Km. The tour of the caves is only in Dutch and I understand precisely no Dutch. Even so it was still very interesting, and it doesn't take a genius to understand what is probably being said.

After the tour of the caves, I walked back to the mooring point to catch the remainder of the boat tour, getting back into central Maastricht almost three hours after setting out.

Before catching the boat I had popped into the tourist information centre and picked up a leaflet about walking around the city, and I now followed this self guided tour taking in most of the city sights including its fortifications, some of which are the oldest examples of such in the whole of the Netherlands. The tour also stops at the magnificent Basilica of our Lady which is more stunning for its outside, which looks almost castle like.

After spending nearly 3 hours wandering around the city centre and the fortifications (including a short stop for a late lunch!) I walked back to the station and caught the train back to Liege.

After popping back into the hotel to swap the Netherlands guidebooks for the Belgium guidebooks I headed back out again to take in some of the sights of Liege, whilst the rest of the population were safely indoors watching the world cup football!

The best way to see Liege is from the Citadel (or the remains of) which sits high on a hill overlooking the city centre and surrounding countryside. The views are spectacular, the only down side is to reach it you have to climb up. The easiest and least lung-bustingly painful is to take the Montagne de Bueren, a set of 373 steps that ascend up the side of the hill, steeply.

Having taken in the views (and recovered the ability to breath) I wandered back down and finished off by having a walk around the centre of the city before stopping in a little restaurant on the same square as the hotel for a spot to eat, retreating to bed just as the football fans all came spilling out flags waiving and car horns beeping (for the next 90 minutes!!)