When it comes to being in nature, Germany has a lot to offer, be it Allgäu, Schwarzwald (Black Forest) or the not so popular National Park Eifel. Spread over almost 26 acres, National Park Eifel offers scenic views, various hiking path and wild life.
As it was Mr. Werner’s birthday last week, we decided to make it an extended weekend and enjoy some time in the woods. I will not lie here, we also tried our luck to find a holiday apartment in the other popular regions, but without success. At last minute, we set our minds to spend the weekend in Eifel and booked the most amazing Holiday Apartment Talbach. The place was quite nice, equipped with everything one needs to relax.
Although we didn’t plan the days in length, we got out best of every day.
Day 1
- Aachen
- Simmerath
- Erkensruhr
As the apartment only allowed checkin at 5PM, we only drove late morning, and started the celebration already at home with the home-made apple pie (on special request from husband of course). It was my first try baking the apple pie from scratch, but it turned out great. If you are looking for recipe, you can find it here at Sally’s baking addiction.
First stop of our drive was a small city Aachen, where we spent most of our afternoon. You can easily spend few hours in Aachen looking at the beautiful Dome, Elisenbrunnen, old city center and some buildings of the university RWTH Aachen.
If you have some more time on hand, Aachen also happens to be the city, where borders of Belgium, Netherlands and Germany meet, don’t forget to visit Dreiländerpunkt.
Tip: If you happen to be in Aachen and have a sweet tooth, there are two factory outlets: Lindt and Bahlsen. I think no one needs an introduction to Lindt and Bahlsen manufactures a variety of cookies, dry fruits etc.
After roaming around in Aachen for few hours, we started our ride to our apartment and the whole path to Erkensruhr was really picturesque, with a lot of hills and valleys and wide fields.
Erkensruhr lies in region Simmerath and is a really small village. All the small villages in the Eifel doesn’t really have a lot of places to eat or to shop for food, so it’s always better to stop in a somewhat bigger city to shop for things that you will need. Otherwise you will also end up like us driving back to another city to get dinner once we checked in the apartment.
Nothing more came out of Day 1, we cooked some food, played animal crossing and relaxed. But as always, the day 2 was of course planned in advance.
Day 2
National park Eifel is great place for hikes. It offers trails for all levels of difficulty and length.
Check out there website to find a suitable trail for you and Eifel also have a star park, where you can observe night sky with bare eyes in the night. Don’t forget to book in advance as the guide night sky shows are always booked.
The trail we chose, was a 15 km long with medium difficulty with the theme panorama view of the north of Eifel.
The trail was marked throughout and it was always easy to find the path. The weather gods also played in our favour and it was on and off cloudy and sunny, giving us enough cool air to calm down.
It took us almost 3.5 hours to finish the trail and boy, were we exhausted after that? We made a quick stop at a super market in Simmerath, shopped for our dinner supply and off we went to another relaxing evening.
Day 3
- Monschau
- Vogelsang IP
We woke up to a nicely fresh 12°c temperature day and decided to do smaller city trips rather than taking on another hike.
The first stop for the day was the small town of Monschau which is famous for it’s medieval christmas markets and the houses with wooden structure.
There are ample parking spots in Monschau but it can get really crowded as the day progresses, specially on weekends. Day parking costs around 7 euros and hourly parking costs are 2 euros. You can easily spend 3-4 hours in Monschau, so it’s a better deal to take the day ticket.
There are a lot of view points, which offer nice views of Monschau from high up above. Few things that you might want to check out in Monschau:
- Old city center
- Monschau Schloss
- Glass factory
- hand craft market
Once you have walked around and seen it all, there are a lot of cute cafes to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee.
For some teasing in terms of what awaits you in Monschau, here are some photos.
It also offers a lot of stores for shopping and none of the store is the typical store that you find in a big city center, but all one of its kind things.
After spending some memorable hours, the next stop was Vogelsang IP. This place was built to module the next generation of the Nazi regime and after world war II was over, it was used by belgian army and since 2006 it is open for public. It also offers some exhibition to display the history of this place.
A lot of hiking trails in the region lead to Vogelsang and it has even parking spots for campers.
That was also the end of day 2 for us in terms of sight seeing and off we went to our relaxing evening in our apartment.
That was also the long weekend coming to an end for us. We had an amazing time in the Eifel and we can only recommend it to anyone who is looking for an alternative to the famous crowded hot spots.
If you have any feedback, or comments or questions, please drop them in the comments below. We look forward to them.
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