Road Trip to Efteling and Zeeland in Holland

Thank you for coming to read all about our road trip to Efteling and Zeeland in Holland.

Travelling to Holland

Early on a cold January morning we set off on our driving holiday to Efteling and Zeeland in Holland. We travelled by Eurotunnel over to Calais. It was our youngest’s first trip abroad at the grand old age of 4 months. We had used our Tesco Club card vouchers to get the tickets for the tunnel which was great.

The benefit of travelling by car meant we didn’t have to concern ourselves with baggage limits or even putting things in proper bags! We could just fill the car up and go.

Efteling with young children

When we got to Calais we drove the 295km to Efteling Theme Park, the largest Theme Park in the Netherlands and the winner of a Travellers Choice award on TripAdvisor in 2018. I’d been there as a child and had good memories of it so was keen to see how it had changed.

Bosrijk holiday village

We decided to stay at one of the Efteling Resorts, Efteling Bosrijk. It’s a holiday village about 10 minutes walk from the Park and is beautifully atmospheric and fairytale like.

We had paid a little extra when booking the stay to choose our House as we were keen to be near the car park and near the entrance to the village as the baby was so tiny it would just be easier. I’m glad we did as it’s a big village and we could have added a further 10 minutes to our walk to/from the pool/shop/car etc if we’d got a house further away. With a 3 year old and a 4 month old that’s a long time!

Our chalet at Efteling

The house was relatively basic but lovely. A wooden A-frame style with 3 bedrooms. One room was bunkbeds and not really suitable for little children as the top bed was very high and the steps a bit treacherous. However the other two were big doubles so plenty of room for the 4 of us. They provided a cot but we’d brought the baby’s bed nest with us so we didn’t use it.

Other than the bunk beds I couldn’t fault the house. A decent size, clean and a reasonable price – we paid 528 euros for 3 nights/4 days including park admission to stay in a 6 person woodland house.  

Efteling is HUGE which I don’t think we’d expected and on the first day Dave came down with flu (the real kind, not man) so we felt a little overwhelmed with it all. It was also bitterly cold (to be expected I guess!) which obviously makes things a bit harder but in some ways it did add to the magic of it all.

Exploring Efteling Theme Park

The next two days were spent exploring Efteling and going on some of their excellent rides such as  Droomvulcht (one of the most enchanting rides I think i’ve ever been on) and the Monorail (the baby’s first ever ride!)

The queues were sometimes long which was a bit tricky with our 3 year old (especially as it was cold) but we did manage a few rides and a visit to the pancake house (of course). This is definitely somewhere we should come back to when the girls are a bit older and the weather a bit warmer as I don’t think we managed to see half of what it had to offer and it was such a lovely park.

The highlight for us all i think was Bosrijks swimming pool. It was warmly lit, a toasty temperature and very atmospheric. Never overly busy and they provided a little float for the baby. We went each evening of our stay. 

Zeeland, Holland

The following morning we packed up and drove the 100km west to Zeeland, and the tiny town of Zonnemaire. We were staying in another fab Airbnb find, an old school house with a windmill in the garden and their very own goats (which were a highlight for our 3 year old).

Zeeland is the most westerly and least populated province of the Netherlands. It consists of a number of islands and peninsulas and borders Belgium. It is quite unlike anywhere we’d been before and the incoming storm certainly made it an interesting few days.

Dave was still in the thick of flu and with weather warnings for large parts of Europe we were faced with quite a challenging stay. However, we were determined to keep going and get out and about (frankly we’d go mad staying in with two young children) so we set off to explore.

Zeeland, like the rest of the Netherlands, is very flat so very exposed so we really felt the 125kph winds and as it’s made up of a number of islands, and therefore bridges, we had a few difficulties getting anywhere as the bridges were closed.

Rotterdam

We managed to get to Rotterdam and explore the impressive market hall (with its amazing roof), we had lunch at a lovely burger cafe and picked up a cupcake from one of the many stalls then went outside to see the bizarre cubic houses.

Delft

We also visited Delft which looked like a gorgeous little canal strewn town but it was too stormy to do much. There was debris from the storm everywhere and frankly it was a bit unnerving so we stopped for an amazing hot chocolate before heading home.

The Hague

Our trip to the Hague was also dominated by weather and again we couldn’t do much. The wind had reached dangerous levels so we didn’t want to be outside and traveling there and back took far longer than it normally would.

We had a snack in a rather odd high-rise bar (to be fair the warm bread and salty butter made walking through a building site to get to it, worth it)….then hastily viewed the Parliament buildings from the car and drove home. 

Mini Mundi, Zeeland

One of our biggest successes was when we stayed in Zeeland and went to the capital Middleburg to Mini Mundi which is a huge soft play, miniature village and fair ground. It’s always reassuring that when the weather throws its worst at you, 9 times out of 10, you can find a soft play! And Europe tends to do them very well. 

Final thoughts

Thanks for reading our blog on our Road Trip to Efteling and Zeeland in Holland. Overall it’s a trip we’d like to revisit in the future when the girls are older and during spring or summer when you can be out and about a bit more. We were very unlucky with the weather. For a first holiday as a 4 it was incredibly challenging but it taught us a few things (such as we definitely need a double buggy and Dave needs a flu jab!) so we walked away a bit wiser.

For another visit to a Theme Park, check out our blog on our weekend visit to Alton Towers in the UK, here.