Our first trip to Europe! Netherlands, Belgium and Germany

Several factors influenced our decision to take that first trip to Europe. My brother was living and working in The Netherlands, and invited us to come visit. We had always wanted to travel the world, and our youngest child had just moved out of our house, leaving us as “empty nesters” for the first time in 20+ years. The biggest influence, I believe, was that Gram (Lorrie) had a heart attack. Our plan had always been to do more and bigger travel when we retired. With the health issues, we started to realize that plans made for the future are not guaranteed. Tomorrow is not certain. So we started planning for now.

As Lorrie’s health improved, we put the wheels in motion. We got our passports, took them on a test drive to all 5 of the Great Lakes through Canada, just to make sure the passports were functional, then we started looking for plane tickets.

Hitting the jackpot

I booked a flight and rental car through Travelocity, and when I landed on the page to select the car, the first few selections gave me a negative price per day!! We only planned to use the car to travel between the airport in Brussels and my brothers residence in Brunssum, NL, so I picked the smallest car with the largest negative price and sure enough, around $250 came off the total price! Big Win!! But it gets better.

My brother and I were talking and I mentioned the rental car deal to him. He said we didn’t need the car and it would be difficult where he lived because of limited parking space. He suggested that I cancel the car, but I was worried that my price would go back up. Reluctantly, I went in to cancel the car and when I did, Travelocity notified me that my form of payment would be credited over $300!!!! I was shocked!! I was ready to start rental car hacking everywhere I went. However, I have never found that kind of price reduction on the rental car page since that one time. I don’t know how it happened, but I hit the lottery with that one.

Getting there

We left Pittsburgh on 12/26/2017 and flew to Brussels with a stopover at JFK in New York. That leads to our first lesson. Since that trip I have avoided JFK like the plague. I absolutely hate JFK airport. To me it seems like they expect you to know exactly how to navigate through the airport, where to go, what to do and when to do it. Asking questions doesn’t help, and it was even worse on the return trip when we had to deal with US Customs, with even more of the “you should know how this works” attitude.

Our arrival in Brussels was so much more friendly and enjoyable. We walked up to the Customs officer, hand him our passport, a couple of questions about our trip and we are on our way.

If you have flown to Europe, you know that most flights leave the US in the afternoon or evening and arrive the next morning. I don’t get much rest on a flight, so I am usually tired on arrival. Second lesson, don’t let that flight fatigue waste your first day. It would have been very easy to go find a bed and sleep that first day away, but you don’t transition into the time difference as well if you do that. Besides, there is so much to see and do, and a limited amount of time to see and do it. Power through it, suck it up and do something. Luckily, my brother already knew this and had things planned for us to acclimate.

Our first day in Europe

Valkenburg Castle Ruins

On the way from the airport to Brunssum, there is the small town of Valkenburg, which is just to the east of Maastricht. We visited the Kasteelruïne Valkenburg, which is the ruins of the only hilltop castle in the Netherlands.

Fortifications were originally built in the 12th century, with destructions and rebuilds continuing through 1672 when the castle was blown up to prevent it from falling into French hands. The castle was never rebuilt after that, and has been a tourist attraction since 1863.

The Velvet Cave

After climbing up and down the castle ruins, we went next door to the Velvet Cave. The Velvet Cave is a series of underground rooms that were created as the local marlstone was mined. The cave is directly beneath the castle, and some of the stone was used to build the castle. There are even hidden passageways that were used as escape routes from the castle into the cave.

We took the tour of the cave which was narrated entirely in Dutch by our tour guide, so we didn’t get much of the story he was telling. The cave itself was awesome, with wall murals that are unique in the way they were made. Artists through the years had built fires inside the cave next to the wall they wanted to “paint”. The fire would create soot on the wall. The artist would then create the artwork by carving away into the soft marlstone. Along with some of the rock, this removed the soot and left some really beautiful work.

After the tour we completed the trip to our first stay in Europe, at my brother’s house in Brunssum. By going back in my memory, assisted by pictures that we took and looking up history of the places we went, the story of our first travel to Europe is much bigger than I thought. I am going to end this first part here and make this a multi-part series. Part 2 of Our First Trip to Europe can be found here.

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For the Green Thumb – mygardengreen.com

For the Woodworker – JLH-Rentals.com