March 12th – Vaals, Eifel, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler
Since we live so close to the German border (10 km), we wanted to show them some nice scenery and old stuff there too. We went to stay at an old town in the Eifel and took the tourist route to get there. First we drove to Vaals and the three-country point, foreigners always freak out when they can step from one country in the next and the next within a second LOL! It’s on the highest hill of Holland (pff, still only 322 meter 😉 ) and it had snowed there again! It was gorgeous up there, we also went up in the tower for some views of Holland, Belgium and Germany.
We crossed the border and showed them the odd looking “Klinikum”, the huge hospital in Aachen where Nico has worked for ten years, it looks more like a oil refinery 😉 After Aachen the Eifel starts, a beautiful region with bigger hills, steep rocks, small valleys, woods and old towns. After an hour we got to Monschau, a town we used to visit often, because until last year we had a little camper on a campground nearby, but we were on a time limit and only stopped at a viewpoint to take some pics of Monschau covered in snow. We continued our drive through the Eifel scenery with Sandy filming and Danny entertaining us with his incredible good imitation of a German accent, until we arrived in the valley of the Ahr, close to our destination. Esp. Sandy was overwhelmed seeing old towns, steep hills with vineyards, and most of all several old ruins! We didn’t stop because we were a little bit late and arrived at the apartment in Ahrweiler around 3.30pm. This time we had the middle one, the “Herzstuben” (herz=heart). After settling in and chilling out, we walked around in the old centre, took pictures at dusk and ended up in the Greek restaurant where we had so much food not even Nico could finish his plate! In the meantime we taught Sandy some Dutch, German and Greek 🙂
March 13th – valley of the Ahr, Sandy’s castle
When we were driving to Bad Neuenahr yesterday, through the valley of the Ahr, we knew what we had to do today! Nico and I had heard but never seen how beautiful it was, because it was only our second time in that area and if you take the highway you approach the city from a different side. So we went to explore the last ten or so km of yesterday’s route and our first stops were Rech and Mayschoss, where we saw the remains of the “Saffenburg” on a hill.
We continued our short drive through the Ahr valley and arrived in Altenahr, where we walked around, had coffee and apple pie and walked up to the remains of a fortress called Burg Are. It was great to be up there, explore the remains, enjoy the views and breath the atmosphere. Sandy was in tears and kept shooting pictures and video. When Nico, Danny and I were done and got cold, Sandy wasn’t ready to leave yet, and of course we didn’t want to deprive her of her new home, so we stuck it out a bit longer. We stayed up there for over two hours!!
When we left we officially renamed the Burg Are to Sandy’s Castle, took a little loose piece of stone out of the wall and walked back, passing the “Amtshaus”, the house that was build at the foot of the hill after the castle got destroyed in 1714. The path down is part of the “Rotweinwanderweg” (Red Wine Trail), the hiking trail that takes you through the whole valley that is known for its red wine. Danny told us some things about the castle in his German accent imitation, that cracked us up again LOL (see videos)! Back in the apartment we also had him say a perfect “gereedschapskist”, a Dutch tongue breaker, it means toolbox (see video).
Back in Ahrweiler we went on a quest for grilled chicken for Nico, and because all the normal restaurants only seemed to serve chicken breast, we ended up in a fast food type of restaurant, but the grilled chicken was not available that day! Nico was disappointed, but too hungry to go elsewhere 😉 On our way back to the apartment, he did buy a grilled chicken at another place, for later 😉
March 14th – the Rhine
After sleeping in and a breakfast with left-over chicken and fresh rolls, we packed up our things and left Ahrweiler. On our way home we wanted to drive along the (close by) river Rhine for a bit, hoping to see a few castles or ruins. The Rhine valley is famous for its castles and fairy-tale-like scenery, but unfortunately for us, the really pretty parts are more to the south (and we needed to head north to Cologne and then the highway west back to Heerlen). We crossed the Rhine on a ferry in Linz, passed Remagen where we stopped at an old bridge, destroyed in WWII, and a bit further to take pics of a few churches and a small castle. In Königswinter we saw the “Drachenfels” (dragon’s rock), a ruin, but we were looking for the “Drachenburg” (dragon’s fortress) that we had seen on pics. A lot of kms later we realized that we had missed it and didn’t want to turn and go all the way back. On the highway back home Sandy was a little scared because everyone was driving fairly close together with 150 km/h – nothing unusual for us 😉
Back home we were just beat and after cooking a meal and doing our internet stuff, we all crawled up underneath a blanket on the couch to watch a movie. Robin was happy to see us again and wouldn’t stop making out with Sandy 🙂