Trip Report eastern NL, Ruhrgebeit, Fachwerkestrasse, Mosel

I would like to know how to pronounce "Huenxe". EDIT: OK, I see that you used the Anglicized transliteration. Hünxe is easier to pronounce. And I see that it's near another X town, Xanten. Without using Google or Wikipedia, anyone know what legendary Germanic hero came from there? Nigel, most of the trip reports we read here are of the variety of "Just got back from Paris/London/Rome/Munich" or some other location that millions of other tourists have visited. But you've got some less-than-well-known spots on your lists, so I actually would be interested to hear about it.

(didn't use Goo... or Wik... but yes I did)

Nigel, we've been enjoying your trip reports.

I would! I love hearing about people's trips :)

"would anybody be interested in a trip report for the trip that my wife and I returned from today?" Nope. ;-) Just because I needed to look at some 'quaintness' I Googled 'fachwerk' and ended up on Jo's page...! (humming "It's A Small World"...)

Tell me about Trier! We will be there soon and so I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Hi, I would be interested in knowing which cities and towns in the Ruhrgebiet, your impressions?

Ok, here we go... This was a pretty random trip. We hadn't got away for a long time and then needed to go over to Amsterdam to collect a few pieces of shelfing so we decided to expand it some and travel around a bit. Just before we started out for Amsterdam we found that our friends in Haarlem wouldn't be there so we rearranged to go to Eindhoven. Usually I plan everything about hotels to the minute and we have a sheaf of reservations and appropriate hotel chain club cards all in a plastic sleeve. This trip was different. We didn't start planning much until a couple of weeks before - I didn't even apply for holiday leave until 10 days before. It was all because we got a great price for the Eurotunnel, leaving after work on Wednesday and returning the following Friday (£140). If we had planned ahead that could have been as low as £98 but we were really happy at not paying £172 each way. If we hadn't done as well as we had I expect we would have taken the train to Amsterdam and not traveled. Well, I'm sure that's all boring so on to the trip... We stayed at: Ibis Coquelles Moevenpick service area Hotel between Essen and Arnhem Moevenpick Hotel Oberursel (near Frankfurt) Hotel Hoerhof in Idstein in the Taunus
Hotel Petrisberg in Trier SuiteNovotel in Coquelles. We drive, usually, and have for years stayed at one of the Accor properties just as you leave the Eurotunnel. We used to stay in one or other of the dreary horrid B&Bs in Dover when we used the ferries but when the Ibis, Etap, and Suitehotel were built in Coquelles (a Calais suburb next to Cité Europe) we never looked back. It works well for us because the crossing is behind us when we start the next morning and the rooms are nice. ... To be continued ...

I got away from work a little early and despite roadworks galore we were early at the Eurotunnel. They have a really cool 2 hour rule. If you are a little late or early, up to 2 hours either way, they pop you on the next available crossing. "Dinner" at Flunch of their special €7.90 Mussels all you can eat summer special and back to Ibis. We had a choice of Ibis or SuiteNovotel. SuiteNovotel was €10 more so we chose Ibis. In retrospect, given the lack of shelves and room, as per Ibis worldwide, we realized we should have paid the extra €10. Excellent €8.60 breakfast with DIY hand squeezed orange and grapefruit juice, good coffee and decent other stuff. Bruges - we had gone off Bruges over the years and tended towards Gent. This time we fell in love with it again. Easy parking a bit out on the north side in the blue zone (remember a window clock). It was great walking around. We loved the lower chapel and the back streets. A really good time. Frites out in the suburbs were even better and much cheaper than in the centre. A short drive to Gent, for a really brief stop at the Luc Van Hoorebeke shop on the corner around from the Mystic Lamb to collect just a few choccies. Now that I have discovered I am diabetic I really have to watch the intake but boy are they good. Now that Cédric has opened his own place we soon need to try his out, but we have concluded several years ago that, for us, Luc's are the best in Brussels, Ghent and Bruges, therefor probably the world. But we will take advice from others. ... onwards to Eindhoven in the next post ...

continued... The run up to Antwerpen from Gent was straightforward. If you are ever driving from Gent or Brugge towards the Netherlands be sure you know which ring route you want. If you want to go left onto R2 you need to go right at the split; conversely if you want to go right onto R1 you bear left. Until I'd done it several times it would floor me. Astonishingly, Lundia in the Netherlands made the shelves we have had in our living room, bought from The Container Store in Texas in the early '90s. Even more astonishing was when we found them on the InterWeb they still had all the parts. So off to Eindhoven went we. It has a very typical Dutch town centre. I only say that because I had never been to that part of the Netherlands. Then it was off to the Ruhrgebeit. I had been to Dusseldorf several times but this was my first experience in the rest of the district. Very impressed by the huge amount of greenery, mostly woods and forest, and fields. Most big industry has left and (I think) all mining, yet rather than tear down the evidence it has mostly been converted to other uses in a very re-use (recycling) kind of way. Next to the very large mall CentrO in Oberhausen is a very blue very large natural gas storage tank which has been converted to a concert venue, for example. Very neat. There is an absolute maze of Autobahns there, most of which are in a grid shape sort of like greater LA, and most of which are unregulated for speed. And in pretty good shape, and never saw a stau there. The most industrial feeling was in Duisberg. Essen was fine, just couldn't find the road into an Aldi. We stayed the night in Hünxe, in a little hotel in the woods behind a service area Mövenpick Marche restaurant. ran out of space - more soon

"Most big industry has left and (I think) all mining, yet rather than tear down the evidence it has mostly been converted to other uses in a very re-use (recycling) kind of way." You may have seen a different part of the Ruhrgebeit than the portion I usually drive through going to and from Belgium (between Köln and Aachen), because to me, it seems that the Ruhr is still one of the most heavily industrialized areas of Germany. It's not nearly so coal and steel heavy as it used to be, but there's a very dense network of factories across the Ruhr. But yes, despite all the industry, there is a lot of agricultural and forest land. That's one of the things I love about Germany. You're never far from greenery.

You know now why I'm not a professional travel writer... We love to stop at Mövenpick Marché restaurants as we drive in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. There aren't as many as there used to be so when we saw one near our route from Eindhoven we planned to stop there. We also found that it had an attached hotel and since we were trying to keep our overnight costs under €100 a night and their normal rate is €72 including a nearly unlimited buffet breakfast in the Marché we jumped at it. This was the Hünxe Ost rest area Mövenpick Marché. I was surprised that all it took was a phone call, in my halting German and her halting English, of about 4 minutes, with no credit card, no phone number, no guarantee, just my promise that I would turn up and her promise that the room would be there. And it was. Check in was in the restaurant, in an antique paper ledger, but alles was in ordnung. The hotel is about 4 minutes drive down a private lane behind the restaurant right into the countryside. Its also a winding trail including 25 steps through the woods which takes only about 3 or 4 minutes to walk. The room is large, plenty of wardrobe/shelf/desk space, several chairs and a comfy bed. Large bathroom, nothing fancy but everything required including a very decent shower. Only one little problem - I nearly managed to kill myself. After breakfast I was carrying luggage down the dozen or so stone stairs (no lift) and glanced over towards the desk and missed my footing. I haven't counted but I believe it was about 9 stairs I fell down, partly head first. I hurt my neck a little, landed strange, bruises on lots of body, very much pain to my right leg. My wife tells me that she screamed - all the housekeepers ran to help. ... more to follow ...