In the days after Christmas we have spend a few days in a holiday park in the most southern part of The Netherlands. The park is located in Vaals in the province of Limburg.
This area is known for its hilly landscape, which is quite unique for the Netherlands. From this place we've made some trips in the neighborhood.

This hilly area in The Netherlands also has the highest point of the country. This isn't that impressive since the Netherlands doesn't have any mountains at all. I'll get back to the highest point later.

On the first day of the new year we decided to make a walk to the three-country point that was very close to the park.
This point is almost 3 kilometer from Vaals, so we decided to go on foot. Not every family member liked this idea (read; the kids), but we wanted to catch some fresh air and have a little walk after the new years celebration and staying in bed a bit longer in the morning. The cold wind didn't make the mood of our kids any better, but we insisted to go and bribed them with a visit to a restaurant for some hot chocolate.

The first part of the route was alongside the main road from the city, but when we left Vaals, we continued on small walking path. As you can see it is a wooded area. And the path also went quite a way uphill too. Luckily it wasn't too steep. At least, not to walk up alone. On our way up we overtook someone with a stroller. This dad had to push his toddler all the way up. We only had to drag our teenagers with us 😂

Along the route we noticed the border with Germany. A few poles were placed along the way. Each painted with the flags of the two countries. It was fun to zigzag between them, moving back and forth between the Netherlands and Germany.

After a while, we reached the exact spot where the borders of the three countries meet. It was marked by a statue and the flags of the three countries. There were quite a lot of tourists there that all wanted to take pictures with the statue. I was lucky to capture a shot without anyone in the frame 😀. Of course we had our family picture taken as well. After all we are tourists too.

To get a bit of understanding how the borders are I'm adding a shot from Bing Maps. I've added the three flags for refference. The city to the right is Aachen. We've visited this beautiful city later too. A blog about that will follow later. I later discovered that @detlev lives here.

As I mentioned earlier in my blog, this place also has the highest point of the Netherlands. While this may not be very high compared to mountains in other countries, it is still the highest point in a country that is mostly flat. As you can see the highest point of the Netherlands is 'just' 322,5 meters (1,058 feet) above sea level 😀

This area is very touristic. Although it was the 1st day of the year and it was very cold, there were a lot of tourists. Not only from the three countries. I hears a lot of different languages around us.
Apart from some restaurants they also have a watchtower and a labyrinth. I think you would have had an amazing view over the three countries in the watchtower if it wouldn't have been that cloudy as it was. That's why I we didn't go in there.

As promised we went for a hot chocolate milk for the kids and a cup of coffee for us to warm up. And in the café I also spotted a relative on the wall 😀

After we warmed up we made our way back to the bungalow park. The way back was a bit easier since we had to walk down.
It was nice starting the first day of the new year with a family activity. Despite the activity the kids did enjoy it too.Strikethrough

I hope you enjoyed my blog.
If you like you can leave a reply in the comment section.

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