Friday and we are up in reasonable time and off to the market. We park the car in a Park and Walk area just outside the city and a 10 minute walk to the Market Square. It cost us 9 euro for the day which I thought was a little steep for the distance we still had to walk. The market wasn’t overly exciting for what it had to sell, a lot of material, cosmetics, factory second type clothing, a small veggie section and other bits and pieces. We brought some chilli olives and went looking for a place for brunch. We picked a place on the side of the market so we could again people watch. I had a Turkish Breakfast and Margaret an Omelette. 

Maastricht has a phenomenal amount of restaurants many of them with outdoor seating. It would have been fantastic if we could have read the menus.
In the afternoon we caught a boat cruise up the Maas, we were getting off just up the river at St. Pietersburg and going to explore the tunnels. Maastricht was first settled by the Romans when they discovered this was a place where they could cross the river through this mud. Turns out the mud is called Maas and of a limestone type that is especially suited for building material. When it dries out it goes solid. This led to the hills being mined for the limestone blocks which were reasonably easy to saw out while in the cool humid mine but went solid when they were exposed to the dryer outside environment. At one stage there were over 200km of these tunnels (now only about 80km) which have a very rich history. 

 We are right on the border with Belgium and they cross the border. We have a fantastic guide, Christina who educates and entertains us for the hour or so we are underground.  
Back out in the open it is hot and sticky again, I’m sure the blocks would never have gone hard in this humidity. We head down to catch the boat and continue our river tour which almost does a u-turn at this point and heads back to Maastricht. We head out to look for somewhere to eat, we come across an Auckland New Zealand shop (never heard of them) but the guy in there had never been to NZ.  We were looking for a fish meal and after many stops finally asked a waitress if they did fish. She assured us they did but when it got explained to us the fish didn’t sound exciting (salmon or tuna) so we settled for home made meatballs. Turned out it was just one meatball, more like a patty really. Headed back to the car park and home.  Another lots of walking day so reasonably tired.