Leaving Burg Eltz, our final stop on this road trip before heading back to London was Aachen.
It’s a city near the border of the Netherlands and Belgium, making for the perfect stop before hopping aboard our DFDS ferry back to London (well actually, to Dover and then driving to London).
We checked into the Innside in Aachen as soon as we got there and it was probably at that point I realised we’d been on the road for about 14 hours that day!
Much as I wanted to go explore Aachen, we decided it made sense to just call it a day and have dinner at the rooftop restaurant at our hotel (which ended up quite nice).
To be fair though, I didn’t have grand plans to properly explore Aachen, there just wasn’t enough time to do it properly but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have a good go at it.
The next morning, we did exactly that – wolfing through breakfast before heading into town to check Aachen out.
Given our limited time, there were two main places I knew I had to visit. Everything else would be a bonus, and those places were the Rathaus (the town hall) and the cathedral.
Walking through Aachen you can see a very visible mix of old and new which I imagine are remnants from the war where buildings would have been destroyed and subsequently replaced with new ones.
The Rathaus was perhaps one we’d have to save for another time as even though we could go in, you need to book a proper tour to explore, which we most certainly did not have the time for.
The market square in front of it though and the walk to the cathedral are definitely worth checking out while you’re in the city.
The cathedral on the other hand, however, required no pre-planning and is actually one of the grandest places we’d visited on this road trip through Germany.
It’s a stunning piece of architecture and I’m so pleased we got to visit it before leaving the city!
And with that, it was time to go.
We would be driving from Aachen over to Dunkirk in France to catch our DFDS ferry over to Dover. Now, this sounds like it’s far away but is only about a 3 hours drive between three countries.
And just like that, our road trip from the UK to Germany was over, with the White Cliffs of Dover welcoming us back home!
It has been an amazing trip of the first (Formula 1 racing, Formula truck), filled with lots of my favourite things to do in summer (castle-hopping, wine tasting).
Looking back through all of this is a brilliant reminder of why I love road trips and why every year’s travel needs at least one.
It’s such a great way to explore and allows you to visit places you perhaps might have missed otherwise. better still when you get to drive right up to your home. After all, the car drop-off place was just down the road.
Anyhoo, catch ya soon!
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