European holiday 2009

We returned home last night from a 10 day visit to France, Belgium and Germany. Had a great time!

We left home early on Monday, Sept. 28th and headed for the first planned surprise of the trip - Legoland in Windsor. Christian has wanted to go here since he was about 5 and now that he is nearly 12, we really felt it was 'now or never'. It was here that I discovered that I'd left the memory card for my camera at home in the computer, so a great majority of our photos are taken from my phone! The park wasn't very busy and we had coupons to get the kids in for free, but it was still pretty expensive and though the kids really enjoyed it, I think we were a couple of years too late to get the full fun factor out of it. The good thing was that there were no queues and they were able to do the rides they liked best as many times as they wanted to. The highlight for me was definitely 'Mini Land' where the model villages were - such incredible detail!

Legoland

We stayed the first night in a hotel in near Dover; we had originally planned to take the Eurotunnel, but ended up booking a ferry to Boulogne-sur-Mer instead as it was nearly half the price. Our ferry left very early Tuesday morning and we arrived in France by around 10:30 am local time. We headed straight for Bruges, Belgium which was really lovely. We spent a few hours mooching around and then left at around 4 pm.

Bruges

We had pre-booked our first night in a resort hotel just over the German border in a small village called Zweifall. This later turned out to be a mistake in more ways than one. Firstly, we knew how far the journey from Bruges to the hotel was (approx. 2.5 hours), as we'd calculated the distance before we even booked the hotel. But the hotel information looked good; it had a lovely pool and the accommodation was actually self-catering but was available for just one night, so we had a two-bedroomed flat for about £95. It was a bit more than we'd planned to spend but we thought it would be nice to relax in the pool after our long journey. The problem was, that we didn't include into our plans how tired we might be, considering we'd had 2 very early morning starts in a row, plus an afternoon of sightseeing. As we left Bruges around 4pm, we hit peak-time traffic around Brussels which left Martin...um.... a little stressed. Unfortunately for me (and him), the car is like a drug to me and I really struggled to stay awake - which only stressed Martin out more as he was also tired but we needed to get to Zweifall. We finally arrived at the hotel around 6:30 pm and eventually found our room - it was located off-site, though this wasn't made clear when we booked. The kids were eager to go swimming and changed into their suits but I thought maybe I should check at the front desk if it was ok because Martin had read in the information pack that the swimming pool might not be included in our rate - now comes the second mistake. I walked down to the front desk and asked where the pool was. The lady at the desk pointed it out and I asked if there were changing rooms there (thinking that it was too cold for the kids to walk back to the room in their bathing suits). She said yes and then I asked if I could have a look at the pool. She said no, that wasn't possible because the people using the pool were naked. It turns out that the hotel is actually a 'Naturist' hotel and though bathing suits may be worn in the pool most of the time, there were specific times (evenings and two hours in the morning) where NO bathing suits can be worn - it's specifically reserved for naturists. So, I went back to the room and gave the bad news to the kids. I think they might have been prepared to use the pool even if there were some naked people, but only if they could keep their own bathing suits on! We thought we'd try that in the morning but then found out that the use of the pool wasn't included in our rate (even though it hadn't said so on our confirmation) and it was ridiculously expensive to use for a quick swim - so we packed up and checked out! I must've missed this page of their website!

The good thing about staying at that hotel is that it had some information about local attractions, days out, etc. and it was from there that Martin had read about a little town called Monschau. We drove there and were pleasantly surprised by this quaint little village with beautiful and unusual architecture, shops & restaurants. It wasn't that busy but you could imagine how busy it must be in summer to justify all the tourism-related businesses.

Monschau

From Monshau, we drove to a small city called Trier. This was also an unexpected delight; Martin had heard of Trier, but hadn't known anything about it. It turns out that Trier has many Roman ruins, including the "Porta Nigra", a gate dating back to 180 AD and is a Unesco World Heritage site. We took a bus tour around Trier, then decided to drive a bit further before looking for accommodation.

Trier

We decided to stop at a place called Saverne, just over the French border - we did lots of weaving in and out of countries on this trip! Through most of this road trip we relied heavily on our Sat Nav (GPS) system. Most of the time it worked well, but sometimes it got itself a little confused and detours (or 'umleitung' or 'déviation') caused great confusion and more than once it tried to get us to go back to where the detour began. Just before we entered Saverne, the Sat Nat gave confusing directions and we ended up going the wrong way. As we looked to turn back, we spotted a hotel right on the roadside - and it had a pool! The rate was very cheap, but it wasn't exactly 4 star - in fact, it was advertised as 2 star. Oh well, one night won't be so bad! I didn't manage to get a photo of her, but Christian not-so-affectionately nicknamed the receptionist/waitress 'Scary Mary'. She was a cross between a rock chick, biker and...um... a man. But, she was friendly enough and informed us that though the restaurant was still open, the pool was closed! Boo! We quickly checked into our room and then went back downstairs for dinner. It turned out that the restaurant offered a set "three course menu" - no alternatives or options. It was the same price for kids as adults and there was no reduction for courses not taken. Ok then... First course was a small salad with ham & cheese. Main course was steak with gravy, green beans and french fries and dessert was ice cream with a dollop of whipped cream. Sounds nice enough - and it was very tasty, but when you take into consideration the nightmare that Christian is when it comes to food... it was not such a successful meal. He ate a bit of lettuce, several green beans, a few tiny slices of steak and lots of bread and fries. He wouldn't even eat the ice cream because it had whipped cream on top but we did not think Scary Mary would cater for our special requests, so we made none. The next morning we drove into Saverne and made yet another lovely discovery. Such beautiful architecture! We stopped at a small but busy patisserie for petit Déjeuner (that's continental breakfast to you and me - ha!) then did a bit of sightseeing and stopped at the market for fresh pretzels to take with us in the car.

Saverne

Our plan was to drive to Weil am Rhein (near the Swiss border) and finally (!!) go to swimming park called "Laguna" which we've been to a few times before. About 45 minutes before arriving in Weil I started to feel unwell. I wondered if perhaps all the bread and wheat products I'd been eating for the last few days were finally catching up with me. I spent the entire 90 minutes at Laguna in the warmest of the hot tubs, feeling my energy draining and wishing I could go to sleep, and in fact, I think I did. At around 4 pm we arrived in Gresgen, a village very close to Zell im Wiesental where Martin's aunt & uncle live. We stayed in the same building last time we visited, but in a different flat. This one was smaller, but just as nice. After unpacking the car, I curled up on the sofa drifting in and out of sleep while watching The Sound of Music on dvd (and as usual, bawling like a baby when Georg Von Trapp sings Eidelweiss to his children), while Martin took the kids to Zell to visit with his aunt and uncle. I still don't know what caused me to feel unwell, all the gluten, maybe Scary Mary's steak didn't agree with me or maybe I just caught a little bug, but I didn't feel quite right for a few days, though the worst was over within 24 hours.

More... later.