Staying cool in the shade at CenterParcs Erperheide

I have very mixed feelings for vacation parks such as Landal, Center Parcs, Roompot, ... In general I find them expensive and busy.  In a way I prefer the independence of a little independent vacation rental home. The added value of the parc is all the services around: the tropical swimming pool (horrendously busy and an attack to our senses for noise and heat), the internal playground (horror),  restaurants (busy busy busy and lousy quality), ... 

But sometimes nevertheless they feel fine. This timee they really felt fine as the weather was marvellous, it was hot but we could spend all our time outside.  The cottages were covered in the woods and we spent most of our morning hours just on a chair in the shade outside our cottage. We had not booked with other friends so there was no obligation to be social either. And the shade there was so nice and it was quiet. Despite all cotages being next to each other, they are well designed that from your terrace you see a square of "empty" field. We heard the birds whistle and whistle and didn't hear our neighbours.  Yeay. 

We ate outside at our cottage with the food we bought in the supermarket on premisis and the delivered luxury breakfast sets delivered at our door. Yes, that's a nice service I appreciated a lot! So we skipped the local restaurants (and had dinner at the festival) and ate on our own. 

Gamechanger was that we had rented bikes this time and the boys are in the mean time big enough to go for a ride on their own and explore on their own the petting zoo etc. With the bracelets that are also your cottage keys etc, they could get in and out as they wished. 

We did profit from more facilities while we were there. It would be a waste of money not to do so. We did go swimming twice and for the first time I could spend the entire time in the outdoor pool which made it almost quite enjoyable. 

As mini-golf gives us quite a vacation feeling and it was nicely hidden in the woods, we did a round of that too.

And nothing can give you the illusion of cooling off more than spending time on the water when it's hot right? So we went for a short pedalo boat ride as well, although our plan to make the children pedal all the time didn't work. I ended up taking over from one tired child while the other also got grumpy by the end. 

 

So in these circumstances I have enjoyed CenterParcs more than ever before.  As long as you can avoid the crowdy inside places, it is quite enjoyable.