2020 - Day 2: Genk to Dusseldorf

The summation of today is night trains are too exciting for sleeping!

We started today by booking a contingency overnight ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich just in case France is also under COVID-19 quarantine restrictions come the end of our holiday.  With Belgium now off the cards (although the Foreign Office have today confirmed that a direct transit through without a stop is allowed), we are likely to now head from Koblenz to somewhere in the Netherlands for our final stop on the way home.  But this is still two weeks away so the main aim for today was to make the drive from Genk to Dusseldorf ready to catch our NightJet motorail train to Innsbruck.

Before leaving Belgium however we had to indulge in some waffles and pancakes so we had a lovely brunch at Sweet Coffee, somewhere we had found online close to our hotel with waffles on the menu.  It’s a small chain we believe with coffee shops in the and around the Genk region and everyone enjoyed their food and drinks (milkshake for the adults, hot chocolate for the kids)!  It was then back to the car for an uneventful 90-minute drive to Dusseldorf, via a quick dash through the Netherlands, parking up at the station carpark ready for our 20:54 departure to Innsbruck later in the day.

Brunch.

We didn’t have too much on the agenda for Dusseldorf, it was somewhere we included in the itinerary purely to catch the NightJet, but since it was only a short drive from Genk we had a good half-day to explore the capital city of the North Rhine-Westphalia region.  One place we did want to visit was Kiefernstraße, a road where many of the houses had been adorned with graffiti-style art work, it reminded me in style of when we visited the East Side Gallery on the remains of the Berlin Wall during a pre-kids holiday quite a few years ago.

Photos from the Kiefernstraße.

Grumpy Paloma.

Forrest loving the bug house.

A photo of the photographer photographing the mini-photographers.

How pictures can be deceiving!

It was a scorching hot day today so after walking from the station to see Kiefernstraße, we jumped on the U-Bahn to head towards the old town and riverside next to the Rhine for some food.  We exited the underground close to the famous Königsallee and the view from one of the bridges didn’t disappoint.  All of us at this point were getting hot and little bothered and the kids were repeatedly forgetting the "Stay with us!" and "No unnecessary touching!" three word mantras from yesterday, so the slightly longer and less friendly “COVID could kill you!” mantra entered the party.  It’s safe to say it still had little to no effect!  On the topic of COVID-19, earlier in the day in Genk almost everyone was wearing a face covering when walking around the town centre (and we followed suit), but in Dusseldorf it seemed much more relaxed with masks only being worn indoors, on public transport, or where social distancing couldn’t be maintained.  It did continue to feel very safe, at least on par with the UK.

Cub enjoying the Königsallee.

We’re not very good at finding places to eat when out and about so we had pre-planned where to have some food on the riverbank of the Rhine at Zum Schlüssel Kasematten.  The food was good, the kids shared a plate of local sausage, sauerkraut and mashed potato whilst myself and Amber shared a large meat feast, probably containing a weeks’ worth of meat in one meal!

A large plate of meat.

It was now time to head back to the station by tram (a request from Forrest) and a quick ice-cream before it was our window to load the car and ourselves on to our train for Innsbruck.  Amber, the kids and the luggage we needed for the trip had to first get out of the car before I was directed up the ramp and onto the top deck of the car transporter wagons at the back of the long overnight train.  Only half of the train will reach Innsbruck, the front section will be divided at Nuremburg for Vienna and we’ll also be combined with a portion from Hamburg for Innsbruck at the same time.  Hopefully in the morning we’ll wake up in the correct Austrian city and my car will also still be on the motorail trailer!

Safely stowed.

Ready to leave for Innsbruck.

I’m writing this blog now as we head east of Frankfurt making good progress on the 500km plus journey to Austria.  Whilst the kids were excited to be sleeping on the train the excitement also lead to their bedtime taking quite some time, especially for Paloma who just wanted to “play a bit more”, an increasingly common mantra of her at bedtime at the moment!  But eventually they did go to sleep and it’s nice to have a beer, look back at the photos from today and write my first proper blog of this holiday.

So peaceful when they are actually asleep!

Blogged by Matt.