Border towns in Holland and Germany

We took a week’s holiday with the family to a holiday park in the Netherlands. The park was enormous with several lakes, playgrounds, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and other activities. There was a range of accommodation on offer from tents, glamping, caravans, bungalows and houses. We stayed in a 4-bedroom house on a creek. The kids enjoyed the high climbing.

While there, we took a few day trips to Maastricht, Aachen and Koln (Cologne).

Maastricht

This was a really cute little town that still had some remnants of its medieval wall and castle. We enjoyed walking around the town and grabbed lunch in the main square.

Aachen

The cathedral in Aachen is absolutely stunning! The mosaics everywhere are so impressive. You aren’t supposed to take photos, but we snuck a couple in anyway. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see Charlemagne’s throne without a tour guide, but we caught a glimpse of it from the bottom floor. The town hall was also impressive. We visited the Aachen museum which was excellent and I highly recommend it. It gives an account of the town from the time of the Romans up to the end of WW2.

Koln (Cologne)

We spent a day walking around this city. The cathedral was beautiful (and apparently the most visited site in all of Germany!). However, outside of the cathedral and the old town hall, there isn’t anything particularly beautiful or historic in the city – it was almost completely destroyed in World War II.