We finally finished packing and getting the house to a state that we'd be vaguely happy to return to at 1am, so when the alarm went off at 5am, it was only the excitement of going on holiday that got me out of bed without too many complaints. A few minutes later I also had a cold reminder that our hot water doesn't come on until 5.30am, but I suppose the cold shower did go some way to help wake me up!
So at 6am on the dot we set off for High Wycombe station to catch the 6.25am train in to Marylebone and then on to St. Pancras for the 9.01am Eurostar to Brussels. The trains all behaved and after a quick dash through the tunnel we were soon arriving in the Belgium capital, our third country of the day after the UK and France. Whilst we didn't get off the train in France, I like to think of the departure lounge at St. Pancras as a little enclave of France as you've already passed their passport control!
We didn't have long in Brussels before continuing on to our fourth and final country of the day in the Netherlands. Our destination for day one was the small town of Kaatsheuvel, but this required first an Intercity train to Breda, before a local train to Tilburg and finally a 20 minute bus ride. By the time we arrived at our hotel we were all rather worn out and the kids were starting to irritate each other and us.
Our reason for stopping off in
Kaatsheuvel is to visit Efteling, a fantasy themed amusement park that first opened in 1952, pre-dating the first ever Disney attraction in the USA. It is very much geared to the younger children with both of ours probably around the optimal age to visit (out of all the rides, there is just one that Paloma is slightly too short to ride on). We had planned to visit in 2020 and despite managing a roadtrip to Europe, COVID restrictions meant we had to avoid the Netherlands or face isolation on our return. A year later we again had planned to visit, but with even more restrictions we had to cancel the whole trip, so it was nice to finally check in to the funky GuestHouse Hotel Kaatsheuvel on our third attempt. The hotel is geared around family trips to Efteling and we booked a package including entry tickets to the park.
Our main day at Efteling is going to be tomorrow, but with the park open until 10pm, including a water and light show that we need to leave before tomorrow to make it to Rotterdam in time for our train onwards to Prague, we thought that since the weather was great and we'd arrived in Kaatsheuvel on time we would purchase discounted evening post 5pm tickets to get a glimpse of the park.
With the park now relatively quiet as people started to head home, we decided to hunt down some of the bigger feature rides and managed multiple trips on Joris en de Draak (a very fast wooden chase coaster where two trains depart and race each other in parallel), Python (a more modern coaster with multiple loops and corkscrews) and for Forrest and Amber, Baron 1898 (a dive coaster) whilst myself and Paloma went on Python for a third time and had an ice cream as she was about 5cm too short for the dive coaster ride. We also went on the De Vliegende Hollander water coaster that mixes traditional roller coaster with a log flume, and an indoor dark coaster called Vogel Rok that I really didn't like and sat out whilst Amber and the kids went again. I also sat out Halve Maen, a traditional pirate ship as I'm not their biggest fan, but the kids went twice so must have enjoyed it.
It was now almost 10pm local time, so we made our way to the lake by the entrance for the light and water show. It lasted for the best part of 15 minutes and was a more relaxing way to finish our first day.
All that was left was the relatively short walk back to the hotel and once the kids were in bed, write this first blog of the holiday. Tomorrow we will spend time exploring the more fairytale aspects of the park and I'm sure we'll queue for a few of the same rides as today again.
Blogged by Matt.
