Caves in Valkenburg, the Netherlands, European Adventure part 3

in #travel7 years ago

So, as you might imagine, we traveled quite a bit and, as I did not speak German, or anything other than English and basic Spanish, there were times I had no idea where we were. I was told that our host was eager to see the caves in Valkenburg, so that was our next destination.
We stopped at a charming hotel. It was so lovely, I took some pictures. Isn't this a beautiful bed? Unfortunately there was only one bed in our double room, a bit of an awkward situation for the Preacha's Daughta and I. It looks like you can pull those beds apart, but you can't.
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It had a beautiful balcony with a little table that was surrounded by grapevines, so you could sit and read and eat grapes.
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Shortly after our arrival, we walked through the town to the caves. I have to say that this trip did have some challenges in addition to the wonderful sights and one of the challenges for me was all of the walking. I have arthritic knees and it seemed like everyone else was just jaunting along while I was really struggling to keep up.
Once we arrived, we bought tickets and waited for the next tour, which thankfully, was not a walking tour. There was a nearby restaurant, where we grabbed a bite to eat.
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I was relieved to be sitting and all of that walking had made me very hungry. I have no idea if this was really good, or if I was just so hungry everything tasted good to me.
We then went to the caves.
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This was a strange experience, partly because I do not speak Dutch, so I did not understand one word the tour guide said. I had no real reference for what we were looking at, but I had thought that once I saw it, I would figure it out. I really didn't. Here's why. What I experienced was a very dark ride on a bus type vehicle which was much colder than I had expected and the things we stopped to look at did not seem to have much in common with each other. There were various artistic pieces to look at, with very intricate and beautiful details and then there was graffiti (and not pretty graffiti). Then there were weird commercial type items randomly placed throughout. Check out the disney characters. That's my dad in the middle.
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Near the end, the tour car dropped us off so we could walk the rest of the way and there were laser light shows on the cave walls. This was kind of cool.
So, kinda weird. It wasn't until I got home that I found out what the point of the caves was. (Still don't understand the bizarre placement of items inside.) These caves were used to hide Jews during World War II. I never would have gotten that from the tour. Thank goodness for Wikipedia!
So we walked back through the town and then spent the night. Next stop-Cologne, Germany!

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