Family Trip to Benelux 2024

I've been looking forward to my Benelux travelogue for a very long time. I've basically never been to Belgium before. I drove through two or three times on my way to England, but that was already 20 years ago. So it was even more wonderful for me to visit this beautiful country. We drove exactly 1,723 km through four countries in 20 days and especially enjoyed the culinary delights, Belgian hospitality, and the wonderful flatlands in Belgium.

From Belgian waffles to picturesque towns and places, to a rhino safari in the middle of the Belgian savanna, everything is included. In addition to Belgium, we also visited Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Therefore, the travelogue is also called Benelux with family, Benelux, who is To beLGien Nothe land Lightembourg. In the end, I even have a small bonus section, as we made a detour to beautiful Germany after our Benelux tour.

Travel to Malta from Luxembourg

Every time we leave Malta for a trip, we're happy that it's so uncomplicated. This time, it's with the exclusive premium airline Ryanair in second class to beautiful Luxembourg. It works out without any problems, and in 2.5 hours we're in the Grand Duchy (little Grand Duchy), because Luxembourg is notoriously not big. But it is beautiful.

For us, it's straight from the airport to the town of Vianden. For this, we'll drive 50 km on the wrong side of the road (since everyone drives on the right again 😱), and I'll have to get used to all the traffic rules again. Not much happens here on impulse. Everything is regulated. On the other hand, you can drive faster here because the roads are flawless. That brings joy.

We're meeting an old school friend who will tell us all the latest gossip from Luxembourg. We're eating Swiss cheese fondue in a cool restaurant that only plays après-ski hits. Fittingly, there's even a chairlift right next door that takes you to a „mountain hut.“ But we're skipping that today because it's relatively cold outside, and naturally, we've only brought our light jackets again. Brrr..... (by the way, that will change later, but more on that below).

Our accommodation is a charming little family hotel in the middle of Vianden. It's called Beim Hunn and is actually more of a huge grill with overnight accommodation. We feel comfortable and had a first super cozy night on our Benelux with family trip.

After a top breakfast, we'll go see Vianden Castle, which is considered one of the most beautiful castles in the world. According to CNN, but we can confirm it now. It's a great trip with a lot of interesting history. At the Website Is there a more detailed version of the story?.

Durbuy – The Saint Moritz of Belgium

As I said, this is my first time in Belgium and the drive from Luxembourg through the sleepy little villages we passed in the middle of the day is fantastic. I have to get used to the speed cameras and speed checks again for a moment. You practically don't know those in Gozo. But the drive is dreamlike and we stop regularly to take photos of the great landscape.

Arriving in Durbuy, we check into the Chateau Cardinal, located right in the middle of town. Okay, Durbuy isn't that big. Everything is right in the middle of town. A town that couldn't be more picturesque and romantic. It rains briefly at noon, which we really enjoy. We haven't had rain for a long time.

Although there are mainly restaurants and cafes here, there are also nice little shops with lovely items scattered throughout, and of course, numerous souvenir shops. We find a small shop that has great colorful and warm hats and stock up there first. At least our ears will be warm from now on. After all, we are in Benelux with family, and everything has to be just right.

Wild World Safari Park

Not far from Durbuy, in Aywaille, we find a beautiful animal park with a safari area. This is convenient, as it rained a bit in the morning. This way, we can drive through deep mud puddles and muddy prairie in our super rental car, and a hippopotamus leisurely watches us as we slide past it. 😀

We will be marveling at giraffes, elephants, rhinos, hippos, zebras, and many other animal species here for the next 30-40 minutes. They told us that getting out is unhealthy, so of course, we will stay obediently in the car. The windows must also remain up. OK, OK!

Just lower the window for a quick photo??? That definitely worked, and we weren't immediately eaten. 😉

Everyone got their money's worth. The kids had a blast, mommy was taking pictures, and me? I finally got to drive off-road again, even though it was on-road here, but the feeling was great. It was only in Dubai even better in the desert, but I wasn't allowed to drive myself then.

Spa – The City of Thermal Baths and Formula 1

Spa is a charming town in the Belgian province of Liège. It is best known for its thermal springs, and is therefore often considered the birthplace of spa tourism. According to Wikipedia, nobles from all over Europe have been coming here since the 18th century. So, we don't exactly stand out here. 😀

We're spending the afternoon here, walking through the town and checking out the casino, among other things. But only from the outside, as the kids are with us. We eat something delicious at a seemingly very famous and popular restaurant and then head back to Durbuy.

I would have liked to stay longer in spa, but our stop here was spontaneous and since the kids were with us, we couldn't visit the thermal baths. That would not have been so bad in temperatures around 12-15 degrees.

Via Brussels to Bruges

Right Monday morning, then the shock. Our two little mice ran away overnight! 😱 Or rather, over the weekend. We can't find them anymore, but we have to go to work again today. Before work starts, we'll take one last walk through Durbuy. The place is really beautiful and charming.

We'll check out of Chateau Chardinal in the morning. All the apartments here are named after the Rothschild family. The wine was unfortunately not included.

First stop after Durbuy: the Docks shopping mall in Brussels. We'll eat sushi here first. Our youngest loves edamame, and generally, we're all into Asian food. After that, though, we'll go in search of new mice. So, the workday starts a bit later today. Mmedia MArkt meights mIt's possible we'll get the Swiss mice from Logitech. I love it.

After that, we continue on to Bruges. We'll pass through Ghent, which we'll visit at a later date. We arrive in Bruges in the afternoon and start our workday. That's just how it is sometimes.

Bruges - Benelux with Family

Jackpot! Bruges is wonderful. Just as we imagined. That's why we booked a cool Airbnb here, complete with a heart-shaped bathtub, a chilled-out designer armchair from Italy that was more expensive than our car in Malta, and a casual smart home. Everyone loves it here, so we're staying for the next eight days.

We're visiting Bruges, where there's a funfair going on right now. Because of that, the kids get to ride the carousel for the first (what feels like) three hours. After that, we're going to the French Fry Museum. LOL. I didn't know that Belgium was known for its French fries, nor that there was a French Fry Museum. In fact, the Frietmuseum in Bruges is the only French fry museum in the world. Here, we'll learn some interesting facts about French fries and how they're prepared.

In Belgium, fries are actually fried twice so they're crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Well, that wasn't important to me up to now. But in the attached bistro, we can taste the difference. Yummy! And the museum was also super exciting for the kids. Benelux with family, the Frietmuseum is definitely a must-see.

After the Friet Museum, we walk past the Beer Museum, but leave it to our right. We also only look at the Belfry, the symbol of Bruges and one of the main settings in the 2008 film „In Bruges,“ from the outside. This tower is 83 meters high and served as a fire watchtower in the Middle Ages. Even today, no building is allowed to be taller than this.

By the way, there's a great indoor playground for the kids in Bruges. The Magic Planet. Here we work two days a week, and the children are allowed to play for hours on two floors. Advantage: By seven in the evening, it's already super quiet in the house. This is very practical, and therefore this tip must be included in my Benelux travel report.

Zeebrugge, Blankenberge, and the Sealife Aquarium

We actually wanted to skip the beaches in Belgium, as we live by the sea most of the time. But the size of the beaches here convinced us. Especially at low tide, you can walk or mudflat hike on the beach here for hours. Of course, that's not possible in Malta, so it's quite special for us here.

And so we drive to Zeebrugge and are quite amazed. The sea recedes for hundreds of meters and we walk all the way to the front despite the wrong footwear. However, two out of four have to give up along the way. The sand is a bit too wet for the summer shoes from Malta. Speaking of summer. I think there are at least 1 million people on the beach here. We always love the shoulder seasons because there's nothing going on. With the huge hotels and the even bigger parking garages right near the beach, it's clear that it's sardine-can atmosphere here in the summer.

We continue to Blankenberge and visit Sealife. It's a bit smaller than ours in Malta, but still very exciting and well done. The children get an explanation in Belgian about how rays reproduce 😁 and are allowed to color in a few seahorse pictures afterward.

Outside there is a great outdoor area with a seal enclosure and a large playground. Two otters splash in the water next to it. It looks adorable. In the evenings, we always look forward to our amazing apartment and spend most of our time by the fireplace.

Ghent – Historic Charm and Modern Flair

After stocking up on warmer jackets and better shoes, we head to Ghent. It's going to rain in the morning here. We researched that. It actually rains for the first hour. It's cold rain, quite unusual. So, we first take a boat tour and let ourselves be taken across the city's canals.

This has been directly connected to the sea since the Middle Ages, which has brought the city a lot of wealth. We really like the city. It has a lot of charm and great restaurants and cafés. Right downtown is Gravensteen Castle, which is a water castle. We're just looking at it from the outside, but a visit would surely be worthwhile.

We are buying the last Easter gifts here. Of course, I mean, we're giving the Easter Bunny some tips from here. 😁 Our kids still believe in the Easter Bunny. And Easter is in a few days. We don't know yet if the Easter Bunny will find us here in Belgium. So let's be excited.

Cadzand-Bad

Since the Netherlands is only a stone's throw from Bruges, we'll take a trip to Cadzand-Bad. A place I've been to before in 2007. And after all, a travel report on the Benelux countries would be far from complete without the Netherlands. Cadzand-Bad is the southernmost coastal town in the Netherlands.

We particularly liked the sand dunes here. The kids jumped up and down them and had a lot of fun. We're here at exactly the right time of year. The beach is almost empty, and the paths through the dunes are easy to navigate. It's surely different in the summer.

We eat lunch at a seaside restaurant and enjoy the view of the ocean. The tide slowly comes in, and after a good two hours, the water reaches the restaurant. Therefore, we walk back along the promenade. The weather is pleasant, not too warm and not too cold. I like it.

As we're almost back at our car, one of the children suddenly shouts, „Daddy, Daddy, look, the Easter Bunny is running!“ 😍 So cute. And indeed, there were a lot of rabbits in the field. We walk towards the field and find rabbit hole after rabbit hole. The little one then says at some point, „If the Easter Bunny doesn't come to Belgium tomorrow, we'll just come here.“ So, a solution has already been found for that.

The Easter Bunny naturally found us in Belgium the next day too, and everyone was happy.

Via Antwerp to Koblenz, Germany

This is actually the official end of our Benelux with Family tour, but since the next item on the agenda is really great, I still want to mention it here in my Benelux travel report.

On the Tuesday after Easter, we're heading to Koblenz. We're driving via Antwerp and suddenly need a good two hours longer because there's a traffic jam in the port. It feels like we drive for a good three hours through the port here. It's perfect right now because work has piled up, which I can easily get done in the car.

After that, we went to Belgium's largest shopping mall, Wijnegem – Shop Eat Enjoy in Antwerp. The mall is huge, just as we like it. We're actually only here for a short break. We find a great Hawaiian shop that offers fresh Poké bowls. Delicious.

After a meal, we'll continue to Koblenz. Everything's running smoothly from here. No more traffic jams, and we'll check into our apartment late in the afternoon. It's located right in the city. To our surprise, we have five rooms with many bathrooms here. Everything is quite large, and our bedroom has a big Jacuzzi. YES!

The kids and I are going to take a bath there right away. Wellness at home is also something nice.

Andernach Geyser

Our kids are crazy about volcanoes. So a visit to the Vulkaneifel is a must on our agenda. Andernach is only a few minutes' drive from Koblenz, and we head straight for the visitor center after breakfast. Here, we get tickets for the boat that will take us to the geyser.

We still have a good two hours to explore the museum. It explains how the geyser works. It erupts every 120 minutes. So, German punctuality, and it's convenient that a boat also goes there every two hours. This ensures that no one really has to wait long for the eruption.

The geyser's water is „only“ 20 degrees warm, which is why it's classified as a cold-water geyser. Unlike in Island, where the water shoots out of the earth, partly boiling. The Andernach Geyser is the largest cold-water geyser in the world, and its water shoots up about 60 meters high from the ground. That is quite impressive, and therefore I definitely wanted to include this excursion in my travel report.

Around Andernach there are still many maars and also the Volcano Route, which you can drive. We are not doing that, as we are going to the beautiful Saarland for a few more days. There you will find beautiful lakes to discover, and we will spend a few quiet days there to relax and unwind.

Then it's back to Malta via Luxembourg, which we are very much looking forward to. We simply love islands, and no matter how beautiful it is somewhere else, it's simply nicer to be back on the island and by the sea. 🤷‍♂️ 🏝️

Conclusion: Benelux Trip with Family

I was more than impressed with Belgium. What a great country, what great and friendly people there. We had a few wonderful days there and saw and learned a lot. Since Bruges has been on my bucket list since the movie „In Bruges,“ I can even check it off here.

We felt right at home in Belgium. That certainly had to do with the brilliant apartment we had rented. If my Benelux travelogue inspires you to take a trip to Belgium, be sure to check out Durbuy and Bruges. They are at completely opposite ends of Belgium, but it's worth it. We liked those two cities the best.

Now at the end, there are some impressions.

Impressions of Benelux with Family 2024