Bonn – Wednesday 14th October 2009

First frost of winter today! It was freezing outside but from behind the glass, next to the radiator and in the sunshine, it was heavenly!

We decided to have a nice easy day today so we went off to Bonn.

Bonn is just below Koln so about 40 miles away but the roads were pretty easy and we made good time. The journey was quite lovely, dipping in and out of the low cloud and bright sunshine, frosty all the way. Nice.

Bonn was the birthplace and home to Ludwig van Beethoven so the place is pretty much all about him.

As German towns go it gets an A* for the shopping. If you need a mobile phone, you can go down one of the streets and see 3 different Vodafone shops almost right next to each other. It has a Karstadt and a Kaufhof and two H&M stores that we found. Parking was plentiful and easy and right in the middle of the town.

The shops were awesome, I need to go back there to buy all new kitchen stuff, and they even had lilac Le Creuset! They were just starting to put out the Christmas stuff too and we were quite tempted by some of the pretties, but Andy kept trying to make me walk near the scary nutcracker men which I dislike even more then clowns. They are evil, no question.

The other thing that I find odd (but lovely) is the number of tea shops over here. Not the cup-of-tea-and-piece-of-cake tea shops back home, but specialist tea shops with blends, fruit teas, green teas, all kind of tea implements, far more impressive than the Whittards type of thing which is all I’ve ever seen back home. Most department stores seem to have a tea section, and most cities have a couple of individual tea shops. In the Karstadt, we were called over by the staff to try the three teas they had on offer, and as they were such nice people (and the teas were lovely) we bought one, and we got two small sample packets thrown in as well. I’ve decided I’m going to start trying more fancy “gay”  tea from now on, it’s a whole new world to be discovered! And I get to have more cake and biscuits. Everyone knows you can’t have tea without cake and biscuits.

We parked at Kaufhof underneath the Munsterplatz right in the middle of everything really. As big towns go, it was pretty small actually and everything was in easy walking distance.

Dominating the Munsterplatz was the giant cathedral (although not as big as Koln by any stretch of the imagination). It really was a lovely building inside and I could have spent hours taking photos, but I didn’t get to take any as there was a man scowling at any tourists entering and disturbing the worshipers. We left pretty quickly.

Bonn is also a university town and the main campus building is contained within a palace, it was pretty cool, a massive yellow building surrounded by bikes and ‘the youth’.

We had a good look at Beethoven’s birth house, it was quite interesting, loads of very small doorways and more scowling guards not liking the photographs, therefore none were taken.

We got to see some pretty cool stuff though. I didn’t realise that LvB was actually pretty much deaf in the end and used ear horns, and they had them in a glass case for all to see! Also various instruments he had actually used and a lock of his hair. Now I don’t proclaim to be a fan, but it was pretty ace. I might actually dig some music off of one of the hard drives and culture myself….

We ended our trip out with a drive along the Rhine down towards Koblenz then headed back to Sunparks via the shops to get some rolls, bockwurst and curry sauce. Yum!

The Vulkan Express (Brohl Lutzing) and Andernach - Tuesday 13th October 2009

I was very excited today about this little trip out. I can’t help it, it must be a boy thing. The Vulkan Express is a private railway that runs from the Rhine at Brohl Lutzing to Engeln, a small town in the volcanic national park. Chuffachuffa chuffachuffa poooop pooop!

Three trains run on the line, now, I’m not going to be able to list what they are, I’m nowhere near to that level, but one is a small steam tank engine, another is a small diesel and the last one is a diesel which has a carriage incorporated into the actual train.

We got to the station a little early for our train, it seems that for most of the summer they run trains on Tuesdays, Thursdays and at the weekend, twice daily. We were a good couple of hours early so we had a little wander round Brohl Lutzing. It was a quick wander. There were a couple of coffee shops and a large (very nice) church, which was about it. For its size it was odd as it had a huge station on a main line and motorway access. Leaving Brohl Lutzing we decided to head down the Rhine a little to Andernach.

Andernach is an old walled city that has just been modernised over time and before anyone realised what had happened, they had made a couple of architectural mistakes, the new town hall (Rathaus) for example. It looks a little bit inside out. It is a steel and glass building which, in the 70s and 80s was probably very modern, now it just looks dated and very ugly. Other than that the town is quite pretty. It’s a nice place to wander round and shop. Don’t miss the town square and the old town hall as they are very pretty.

We stopped for a little while to get some lunchables in the form of currywurst before heading back to Brohl Lutzing to the train.

On our return we found that the small diesel tank engine would be pulling us up the mountain. Attached were a small freight car, the passenger carriage and a dining car.

The passenger carriage was split into two halves. Both halves were the same and were wood panelled with wooden seats with overhead luggage racks.

The trip was about 1 hour, twenty minutes each way. The train took us up the hills through loads of little towns and stops and through the countryside, fields and meadows. I think that in May, if you get good weather, it would be even more pretty. All the alpine flowers would be out and the fields would all be green rather than ploughed. Never mind, the views were still outstanding. There was a man turkey-herding!

On reaching the top there was a small exhibit about fossils found in the area and a tea shop. Coffee and cake for us! Today’s cake was a cherry cheese cake, baked with icing on the top. As we found from our Black Forest trip, we only ordered once slice, which was more than enough for the both of us!

The fossil thing was rubbish. They’d carved some shapes into some rocks and then had a very badly designed “giant frog” and “iguanodon” made out of concrete.

After playing peek-a-boo with a small German child we got back on the train for the return journey. The sun was shining, and it was warm inside the carriage so the return journey was nice and relaxing.

It costs €12 per adult for the return ticket and I think it would be an ace way to spend an afternoon with kids. The company run a Christmas Service to meet Santa and they also do party nights where there is live music and dinner at the end of the train ride and endless amounts of booze. These are quite expensive but undoubtedly very fun!

The drive home was clear and we made it in about 45 minutes. Realising we actually had no food we decided to go over to the complex to the pizzeria, expensive but nice food the menu was not very exciting and the drinks were over priced but not a bad meal to be honest.

Burg Eltz and Cochem – Sunday 11th October 2009

Another sensible get up time for us today meant we had a full day ahead of us to get out and about. We decided to head down the road to Burg Eltz, probably the cutest castle in the world.

We parked up near to the castle and went on the ‘Wanderweg’ through the forest along the side of the valley. After about 20 minutes of walking we rounded a corner to see our destination.

The castle is a proper fairy tale one in the middle of the valley on a rocky outcrop with a river running at the bottom. It has round turrets and it looked (as we found out later to be true) like it was a mix and match of buildings joined together.

As we got nearer, it was clear to see that the Sweeney Family curse was once again coming into effect. Probably one of the most beautiful places of the holiday so far had an entire wall covered in scaffolding. Frustration set in as we got closer and we found that the entire castle was being held together with giant pins to renovate and stabilise the schloss.

The scaffold was there for a reason and I was happy with the reason, without it, the whole place would fall apart and it would be lost.

We had a good look round. I would, when taking a camera, make sure you have a decent wide angle lens (a 10-20mm would be ideal) or make sure you have panorama software to get the inside courtyard shots.

The team at the castle do tours in German, Dutch and English, we had to wait for ours for about an hour but it was worth it in the end. We spent some of the time looking at the treasure collection; it was full of very pretty shinies!

We were taken round the castle with a large group (which was a little too large to be honest) and we were forbidden from taking photos, (boo). There was little to take photos of really. Most of the rooms inside were covered in plastic sheets as the interior was being renovated.

Hopefully in time, when the works are finished, the place will be awesome and we will have to come back. There is no expected finishing date for the work.

All in all, it is a lovely place to go. The parking is €1.50 and the adult entry fee is €8.00. It’s not so bad but probably worth waiting a few more years for the work to be finished.

Anna got us an ace little fridge magnet for home and we started the long walk back up the roadway to the car. I’d say, it is easier to park and do the Wanderweg both ways as the gradient is a lot less steep.

Knackered and back at the car, we decided to pop over to Cochem.

Cochem is a very pretty town with lots of nice Tudor style buildings and cobbled streets. It is on the banks of the Mosel River, one of the most important waterways in the area. Also, a lovely wine region, yum!

It was packed. Hundreds of elderly people shuffling round looking at the tat shops, lace and leather merchants and going for coffee and cake. It was brilliant!

We had some Currywurst with Bratkartofflen and then we stopped for some coffee and cake with some of the elderly populous.

Once the rain started, we headed off quickly to the car and back home.

It was a shame when we realised that Cochem, (being a staging post for German forces during the war for the Ardennes), was completely flattened by the RAF during the 1940s. The town has since been lovingly re-created in a similar style to the original.

Why could Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK not have been done this way! It would be beautiful!

Even the large Burg that overlooks the town is a re-creation as the original burnt down in 1689.

The rough guide describes Cochem as “Averagely uninspiring”, I kinda agree but it is a generally ‘nice’ place to go. There’s just not that much there apart from the food places and crappy shops. Bit of a shame. We didn’t fancy sitting on the chairlift in the rain to get to the top of the hill to look over the town either. Ah well. At least I saw a dog that looked like an ewok, so it was pretty cool in the end.

Blankenheim and Bad Munstereifel - Saturday 10th October 2009

After going to bed at child o’clock we got up at OAP o’clock, we were awake at about 6 but dozed until 7ish.

We decided to head out to Blankenheim, we had a leaflet for it that we picked up somewhere so decided to have a look and see what it was all about.

Arriving pretty early on a Saturday we thought that it was a bit quiet, it looked like it could be a pretty busy coach party style town so we got on and had a good wander about before the expected crowds rolled in.

I suppose I would describe Blankenheim as a bit like Monschau but smaller, a lot less touristy and it is not permanently Christmas. It has lovely cobbled streets and only one building, albeit a lovely one, was covered in scaffolding. The rest were a mixture of Tudor style white with beams and more modern, shapely concrete, 50’s style ones which are common as post war rebuilds in West Germany.

The town has a large “Berg” or castle overlooking the town. This one unfortunately was not open to the public and was instead a youth hostel (inhabited today by the local scout group).

The castle’s once ornate gardens were now a meadow inhabited by local horses (who were very pretty indeed). The region has a large amount of sandy/light brown horses with really blonde manes and tails. There’s a field of these sandy ponies not far from Sunparks, I reeeeaaaaallly want to go and see them. When we drove back today, they were walking over to investigate a carload of hikers that had stopped near them, so I think they’re very friendly!

We went for a short nature walk and saw some pretty little snails all over everything, we had to be pretty careful as most of them were very young and VERY small.

I’m sure Anna will chip in with some more! Oh the snails! They were brilliant! There were loads of them, in all kinds of colours – yellow, orange, swirly stripes and all kinds of sizes from a couple of centimetres down to barely five millimetres! There were so cute! The path we found them on also had some proper fairy sized mushrooms and some very odd snails that were quite oddly shaped – they were small with very narrow conical shells, we tried getting a photo, but they were so small the camera had trouble focussing on them.

Back into town and the coach parties had not arrived, nor had anyone else really, I’m sure towards Christmas time the place will be heaving but October is good if you want a hassle free wander.

Bad Munstereifel is on the river Erft and is also similar to Monchau but bigger. The streets are wider and there is a definite route through where Monchau is a bit twisty with loads of little snickets.

Munstereifel is the place to go for food and shops. There was far greater choice and it was a lot busier than Blankenheim.

I can imagine the place being completely mental come Christmas as thousands of little old ladies from miles around are shipped in one coach at a time to spend their hard earned retirement monies on useless tat that they will never use and try to palm off on unsuspecting family members.

There was a cool little ninja kitty on our walk through town – he was trying to get in a closed window, as I don’t think he’d realised it wasn’t the one he came out of. As we watched he was doing that crazy look that kitties do and I was a little worried that he might jump off the windowsill after whatever bug had caught his attention, but then he managed to figure out the way back over the canopy to the open window. He was a silly kitty.

We stopped off for lunch at a place called Amadeus where we both ordered the food of glory and wonder, schnitzel. This was Champignonrahmschnitzel to be precise which came with a starter salad and a huge side of chips. YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM (repeat till fade).

After basking in the glow of awesome and joy for an hour, and trying a new non-beer called Stauder (from Essen), we left and made our way back to the car to come home.

The way back was rainy, sunny and foggy (all at different times, duh!) and was on some of the best roads ever. They seem to have resurfaced everything recently and we made rapid (but safe) progress down to Nurburg (where we got a crate of Bitburg for Katie and various non-beers for me).

Nurberg is great but no ring today as there was BMW racing on (which could be heard from miles away echoing round the valley).

About 15 minutes later we were in Sunparks and snoozing. Tonight we went to the swimming pool, which is a lot smaller than Vielsalm, but it was worth it to fill an evening and wake up a little before heading back to the flat for dinner and bad comedy on the TV.

Sunparks – Gunderath – Friday 9th October 2009

And off we go on another trip to Germany! I’ve been really looking forward to this one. We are staying in a Sunparks in Germany this time as opposed to the one in Belgium.
The park is in Gunderath which is in the Eifel region. This is on the western border with Luxemburg and is a volcanic area with loads of hills, valleys and craters, awesome!

It was a nice early start (but late for us at 0630hrs). Got to the chunnel in plenty of time and were across in no time. We did a quick trip to Auchan for fuel and munchies (most importantly Lion Bar cereal and milk!)

The drive itself was nice and quick, about 5 hours through France, Belgium and into Germany. We didn’t stop for lunch as we had loads of sweets and pastries to tide us over.

We arrived, got our key from the check in lady (who looked pretty tired and cold by the time we got there (but she had just been filling her happy German face with sweets!) and found our pad. We pretty much have a studio apartment with a small kitchen and bathroom. Just what we need for the two of us.

The buildings are older and look worse on the outside than the Vielsalm houses but on the inside they are a lot more cozy. In stead of being cold and tiled throughout, there is carpet in the entrance hall and laminate in the living room and it has some of the largest radiators I have seen in AGES! Huge bed too!

The centre of the site is a lot busier then Vielsalm with much more to spend money on. The site prices are a lot more than the local shops so we need to do a trip out tomorrow for supplies.
I am looking forward to going there and having the all you can eat German Buffet though, sounds ace!

We went for a walk round the site and down to the Stausee, a small dammed lake at the top end of Gunderath. I think we went there at just the right time, the sun was setting and the reflections on the lake of the sky and autumn colours were a photographers wet dream,… (except for doing a nude shot of Girls Aloud - lol). Don’t forget the crazy fish! I shall explain…

As we were walking around the lake getting some photos we heard a heavy splash and saw some big ripples spreading out, but none of the ducks looked like they’d moved, so we ignored it and carried on round. Then, as we were just passing over the dam we just turned to look at the water at the right time and saw a fish jump fully out of the water! Twice! Not sure what type of fishy he was, don’t think it was a carp as it was slimmer and quite silvery, perhaps a trout? I dunno, I’m not much of a fish person, but it was certainly big enough to feed a couple of people quite well. I think it was trying to catch the bugs on the surface. We waited for a while in case it did it again so we could get a photo, but it didn’t. Shortly after we met a man and his excellent dog. It was big and hairy.

Gunderath is a very small town that has a couple of restaurants supplying people that need to get out of the prison camp with normal German food at a reasonable price. Everything was below €10 and from the menu looked TASTY. Will definitely be going there for din dins soon.

On the way out we saw some gentlemanly graffiti saying “Gangsta” and some pretty little ponies. We thought the place would be excellent for our mate Mr J. He really wants a small holding and almost every home in the town has a paddock and access to a stream. It was brilliant, and really quiet as well.

We headed back to our flat and had a sit down with some tele before, at about 2000hrs, my eyes closed and didn’t open again until the following morning, lightweight.

It rained super hard during the night and woke me up once or twice, but it sounded very cool.

Triberg Falls - Friday 15th May 2009 - Wet, Really Wet

The Triberg Falls are the tallest waterfalls in Germany, and as we discovered, if you go on the wrog day, they are certainly the wettest.

The day started out okay, a little bit grey and just as we arrived, the sun came out. Brilliant, ditch the fleese nice wander round in the sun,..... well,... we got most of the way to the falls, about a ten minute walk before the heavens opened. The pathways became streams and everything started to steam.

I made the error of going back to the car to get a brolly, i came back soaked.

We climbed down the falls to almost the bottom, it was definately photo pr0n for Katie and myself.

After the falls we headed into Triberg town to get some food. We settled in the only place that seemed open, an underground bierkeller style restaurant for pizza and pasta.

Awesome!

Konstanz - Thursday 14th May 2009

We took the long drive out today to Konstanz and the Bodensee today. I seem to have developed a nice cough,... meh.

Konstanz on the other hand is lovely, its a bit like Geneva but with less banks but it is still filled with rich looking people.

Konstanz is situated on the western edge of the lake where the Rhine enters Lake Constance. The Rhine exits on on the other side of the Bodensee. The city was created in the stone age but takes its name from the Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus. The town is split down the middle on the border with Swtizerland and, at the time of its creation was the only place in the local area with a bridge across the Rhine.

Anyway, back to the day, we had a wander round the city, taking in the sights. There seems to be quite a lot of construction going on at the moment so once again, lots of scaffold.

Amongst the sights were the cathedral (with an interesting masonic symbol on the ceiling) and the harbour (containing some very expensive boats).

It was once again, just a really nice place to be. We ate some food by the harbour bumbled about and had some coffee and cake in the centre.

Andy (who had left his passport at home) had managed to leave the UK, travel through France, Belgium, into Luxemburg, Germany, then France again before ending up in Germany, had no problems wandering over into Switzerland, get in, 5 countries in as many days!

We finished our day with a (cold and windy) boat trip onto the lake.

About an hour later we were in the car on the way back.

Feldberg and Titisee - Wednesday 13th May 2009 - A Day Off.

After the trauma of using public transport and too much walking we decided to have a mid week 'non-day".

We drove a little way up through the hills to the mountain and ski resort of Feldberg. It is a typical small ski resort with a couple of decent looking runs and more to the point, they have cool goats to feed and pet. They're a bit "enthusiastic" about getting fed, though, nearly lost a finger.

Got to stamp about in some of the last grubby snow patches right at the bottom of the hill, so perhaps wearing flipflops was a bad idea!

Browsed around in the couple of souvenir shops full of some disturbing tat and bad booze, all overpriced and crappy.

Deffo worth a trip to again if there is some snow and we are down that way.

We spent the afternoon relaxing by Titisee, watching ducks, dogs and people wandering about. Lovely day!

Freiburg - Tuesday 12th May 2009 - The Cambridge of the Black Forest.

Freiburg is awesome, it is on the western edge of the Black Forest and was only a short train ride away from Titisee, thats right people, i took the train somewhere.
Another cool thing about Freiburg is that it is twinned with Guildford.

We took one of the DB red double decker trains. It was clean, exactly on time and smooth. The view was awesome as we passed through little meadows and over bridges along the edges of mountain streams and rivers until we the land opened out and we entered civilisation.

Freiburg is a university town and also is a Free Market town, which is where the town gets its name.

At the centre of the city is the market place and the cathedral which date well back to the 1500s. When we got in we went straight to the market square to find a craft market up and running selling everything from wooden toys to plants and flowers.
Dominating the market is the cathedral, the sweeney curse was in play as the thing was covered in scaffold,... as usual. I swear one day im going to go somewhere where they have completely renovated a building and it will be gleaming and beautiful, on that day, i guarrantee that i will have forgotten my camera.

We spent the morning wandering round taking in the sights and then we headed over to the hills to the east and began to climb. We climbed and climbed and eventually reached the top. At the summit we found a spire, a tower of doom, step after step after step. Shattered, our group reached the top and looked out, absolutely beautiful. The clouds had cleared and the sun was out and the view went on for miles.... Katie wasn't too keen on the height though!

We returned home tired, shattered and happy at a day well done.

My Birthday Trip to Belgium - Friday 10th October 2008

And here we go on another road trip of glory. This time we are accompanied by Sean (hello) and Laura, our destination, Vielsalm in the heart of the Ardennes Forest, Belgique.

Laura and I had arrived at the Sweeney’s at around 8:30pm, Thursday evening – this despite leaving Sale, near Manchester, at just before 3 in the afternoon. The excessive delay was mainly due to traffic on the M6, as some considerate soul had decided to hurl himself from a bridge. Thanks, guy. It would probably have been worse had Laura not known about a secret way out of Keele services, which, although not being for official public use, got us moving again. Upon arrival, we were greeted by an excited Mrs Anna (excited mainly because she normally only gets to greet Andy, and we’re infinitely better), who made us tea. This means she wins, in my world. We headed into Hertford to grab some food, got distracted and had a drink, headed to actually get some food, had to wait for my plaice to be cooked, as I refuse to eat cod (go morals!), finally got food, and then went back to the flat, where Andy was waiting for us. After a hearty meal of fish and chips, we got settled and got ourselves some much needed shut-eye, as Friday was going to be an early start…

Our day begins at 05.30 (see? )to the sound of Sean’s alarm, I cant remember what the tune was but it was enough to wake us up in the next room. (My alarm is a soothing Regina Spektor song. I doubt it was that, but Laura’s annoying noise-racket would certainly have done it.)With a groan, Anna and I get up, get some clothes on (its only polite) and got showered (obviously without clothes on). We roused the others and then we packed the car and grabbed some brekkie.

We left the house by about 0615hrs and began our drive. It was a great drive, we got to the M20, driving up and down hills and through the valleys with the sun rising in front of us. It was GLORIOUS! (The roads were unbelievably clear. I wanted to comment on it but thought I’d just jinx us, so didn’t bother. When we got to Tilbury (Dartford), we learnt all about the big gas holder things, or whatever they are, and all the animals that live in them. Anna was worried that one of the Polar Bears had come with us. It hadn’t though. She is clearly a dumb.) What you learned was that there were four gas containers and each one had a different type of animal in them, one had polar bears, the others had Mongooses, Gorillas and Tigers. We worked out that it was a bit like Thunder-dome, two men enter, one man leaves.

We arrived at the shuttle in very good time and boarded on the 0900 shuttle.

I’ll leave Sean to describe the Chunnel trip.

(The annoyingly 9 o’clock-ish Chunnel trip, even though we were there for an earlier one. Grr.)

Anyhoo, having never been on the Chunnel before, I can now officially declare it the single dullest mode of transport ever created. After going through some incredibly lax border controls, (we don’t care if you are leaving the country) you get on a train in your car (which is quite cool, I admit), the doors shut behind you, and then you sit there while a speaker system speaks to you in both English and French. How very continental. Then, as the train begins to move, you look excitedly out of the tiny, and really awkwardly placed, windows, and watch as you go through what looks like an industrial estate, before disappearing into the dark. It is then dark for the next half hour. That’s it. No view, no trolley service, no piped music, no bar, no smoking salon, no escape from the smell of human emissions if you’re by a toilet.

Well, you do have to look at the advantages, its 35 mins, there are no waves, no sea sickness, no kids running round hitting each other and screaming and feeling sick. It is warm and smooth and you get to sit in your car, have a short sleep (not having to worry about being pick pocketed as you sleep in the bar) or grab some grub that you remembered to pack and bring along with you.

Eventually, however, the sunlight breaks through once more, and you emerge into…what looks like another industrial estate. Honestly, for all the money spent on the thing, you would hope that they might have tarted the entrances up a bit. But they haven’t, and so we dutifully waited for the doors to open. Suddenly, and without warning, the cars in front of us began to move, and we emerged from our carrier, blinking in the light of a French morning.

Saying that, you get to drive out of the train (pretty quick really, it is an ordered queue, no one cutting each other up as you all try and leave at once) and once out, you are on the motorway and up to speed in seconds.

On the other side, we went to Auchan, the uber Hypermarket of Glory. After stocking up on goodies, such as SMACK and other cheese based articles we started the drive. (Smack is not a cheese based article. It is a breakfast cereal, and it has been proven that cereal is the only food on earth that does not go with cheese. FACT!

Anyway, Andy seems disinclined to discus the shopping Mecca that is Auchan. Ere, you can buy pretty much anything. Laura and I got ourselves 4GB memory sticks for 9€, and we are already planning our purchases for on the way home. These are guaranteed to include alcohol and interesting meats – I am definitely getting some snails and horse meat. The horse steaks look unbelievably good, and Laura has said she doesn’t want to try them, so I won’t even have to share. Result. I am tempted to get Jamie and Amanda down for dinner and not tell them what the meat is, although Laura thinks Amanda may cry if she knew she’d eaten Shergar. Meat aside, there is a massive selection of goods to buy, and all at relatively low prices – definitely worth a day trip.)

We drove and drove and drove until we reached the Spa Francorchamps race track. Amazingly there were cars going round the track and it looked like a Citroen 2cv racing day. (I was lucky enough to sleep much of the way, as I was tired from all the doing nothing. It’s a hard life being me. Cars racing don’t massively excite me, although they were quite cool screeching round the track. We also saw some mushrooms which proved beyond doubt the existence of gnomes. Look at that picture and call me a liar.)

Upon arrival at Sun Parcs, our home away from home for the weekend, we went to reception to book in and get our keys. We then went up to our little house to unpack.

The houses are all very similar. The one we had was classified as a cottage, not much in it between them all really. It has a large living and dining space downstairs with a toilet and bathroom. Upstairs it has two double bedrooms.
Things to remember for the future:

1. bring tea mugs, they only have small espresso coffee cups.
2. bring a kettle, no kettle, no tea,
3. bring towels and bedding, we have sleeping bags but would be nice to have sheets.
4. Tea towels and washing up liquid are not provided.
5. To ensure that you don’t sleep in a position where your knee will knock against the ridiculously placed and ridiculously easy to switch on, light switch three times in the night, waking you up.

Sean, Anna and I went for a trip to the pool down the road. I’ve been here so many times now I kinda take most of this stuff for granted, so once again, I’ll let Sean describe the pool and the fun we had there.

(You cannot swim in the pool. It is too shallow and neither the right shape nor boringness to allow for swimming. This is due mainly to the fact that it is chock-full of fun things, up to and including three slides! (one massive twisty one, one tiny baby one, and one where they spray water at your back as you go down a slope) A wave pool! A Magic River! (a circular pool with a strong current running around the outside that just pushes you round without your doing anything) An outdoor section! A Jacuzzi! And much, much more!

We dossed about for about an hour, just playing like kids. There was a disturbing incident when we sat in the Jacuzzi, however. When we tree climbed in, there were three girls of around 15 in there, chatting away in some form of foreign and we sat quietly at the other end. Then a man came to join us who, and this is the disturbing part, had nipples that were about an inch long. Seriously, they were longer than any man’s nipples should ever be. We scarpered fairly shortly afterwards, and continued our fun-time.

Fun-time almost came to an abrupt end after we had left the pool, however, when Andy almost killed himself slipping on the wet floor. Sadly, he stayed on his feet, and hilarity was averted.)

After about an hour, we came back to the house, collected Laura and we drove to Prüm, a lovely town in Germany. We went there last Christmas with Chris and Faith and we went back to the same restaurant.

Now I have to say, as little places to eat go, we can really pick them. This place is fantastic. It mainly sells meat in various forms, with loads of veg and in a really tasty way. I’ll let Anna describe the food as she is my resident expert! The restaurant was called the Posthotel.

NYOM NYOM NYOM

Not as descriptive as i would have hoped but accurate! Snitzel and Steak, was yummy indeed.

Mohne Dam and Bad Sassendorf - Sunday 13th July 2008

I was awoken quite rudely by my mobile today. It had turned itself off in the night because I had forgotten my charger and the battery had gone completely dead.

Even though it was light outside and it was about 9am my body just didn’t really want to work. I managed to sit myself up and the moment I swung my legs out of bed I felt that “WHY!” creaking cracking noise from most of my joints after the total punishment from day before.

I struggled to the shower and stood under the running water for ages, it was nice.

The thought of the long drive home was not one of excitement but there were a couple of things that we had to do before we left.

We met up with Chris and Faith outside the room. Gathered our things and loaded the car. We met the girls who had checked out already in the Kamps on the ground floor for a bit of food. I had the strongest coffee I could find and a Nussecke.

Our first destination was the Mohne Dam. This Dam generates power and holds back the Mohnesee. It was built in 1913. It is 36m high and 777m wide. It was destroyed in 1940 by the RAF – documented quite well in the film Dam-busters with the legendary bouncing bomb.

Now I haven’t been to the Dam since I was about 8 years old. We found parking and walked out onto the dam. To our left was the Mohnesee and to our left was the small town of Gunne. After the lessons learned in 1940, the town now resides on the side of the hill, almost out of reach of the torrents of water held back by only a few meters of stone.
The sun was out, the sky was blue and it was the first really relaxing moment of the whole holiday. The stroll over the dam was warm and there were only a few people about. I think on our return next time, we might have to do one of the countryside walks. It is a contrast to the rest of the region (which is predominantly industrial). There are loads of evergreen trees, and plants and general greenness.

We were there for about an hour, taking in the sight and wishing we had time to have a boat trip.

Our final stop off before the journey home was a small spa town near to the Dam called Bad Sassendorf. Sassendorf is a salt mining town and is locally famous for its salt water baths and ‘Wellness’ treatments.
Parking is not stress free in this town, a place dedicated to relaxing people and keeping people alive, it has the worst parking in the whole of Germany. We spent quite a lot of time gridlocked, waiting for the aged drivers of the town work their way in and out of parking spaces.

After about 30 mins we managed to get parked and strolled into town. The first thing I notice, as I’m sure my companions did as well, was that we were by far the youngest people in the town. There was an organic, natural produce, hippy style market on in the town and the main streets were packed with bumbling elderly people, all looking for tat to buy and offload onto unfortunate relatives……..
We eventually found some Curry-wurst and chips to chow down on and made our way to the Thermal Salt Baths. We paid, changed and got into the salt water pool, it was lovely and warm and felt strangely ‘silky’ and we swam about. Once again, we were by far the best looking and youngest people there, so I suppose, in a way, it worked – we looked and felt fantastic, especially after the stressful day before.

An hour later we were shrivelled up like prunes, changed and ready to roll. We got in the car, got out of town and onto the Autobahn for our trip home.

We did the journey pretty much all in one to be honest and made good time. We stopped for a breather a couple of times just so that I could wake up a bit and get some blood flowing.

The Chunnel was reached in about 5 hours and we were on time for our shuttle so went straight through.

It was an excellent weekend away, the company was ace and we managed to pack loads into a short space of time. At £50 for fuel each way, it certainly beats flying