Europe family road trip day 5 - Munster, Germany

The fifth day of our trip was in Germany to see Ben’s gran one more time before we headed onto Belgium the next day.

Again, we wanted to spend as little money as possible as we’d already spent as much as we’d really wanted to – £1200 – and still had a day in Bruges to go where we wanted a tour of the city, plus the petrol costs to get back. There will be a blog post soon with a breakdown of all the costs from this trip. Our ideal budget was £1000, but this was adventurous with needing to buy European breakdown cover for a 24 year old car (£150 for this alone), travel insurance for a pre-existing medical condition (£50) and so on.

There were lots of costs that we had to pay before this trip that will cover us for a whole year. I think if we can manage an eight day road trip to Europe as a family of four for under £1500 this is pretty good, but we’re trying to get it as low as possible. My next ideal target was £1200 after the £1000, but we’re there already, doh! It may be the full £1500 after all.

Anyway, that will all be in another blog post to share how much an eight day road trip driving through Europe as a family of four cost us.

So the plan was to visit Ben’s gran in Soltau at the care home for a couple of hours and then come back to Munster to go to Flugenhofsee beach lake for a free day out.

A day in Munster, Germany

We did stick to our plan today. We saw Ben’s gran for the second and last time on our trip. We visited for around one and a half hours this morning before lunchtime. We left when it was time for Ben’s gran to have lunch.

We drove back to Munster afterwards to make some lunch and went back to the swimming lake called Flugenhofsee afterwards. It was baking though as we were in Germany for a heatwave! The temperatures hit 37 degrees Celsius! It was so hot we couldn’t even walk on the sand! The kids loved going in the swimming lake to cool down, but there was no free shade for us to sit in, so it was probably good when Reuben needed the toilet and so we headed back to Uli’s house. We stayed inside and didn’t do much for the afternoon as it was so hot outside and better to keep the kids in.

We played games, had dinner and then headed back to the lake one last time after dinner when it had cooled down a lot. We could walk on the sand now and the kids could play on the climbing frames without burning themselves!

Overall, today was a pretty relaxing and chilled day. We managed to soak up some of the boiling sun and Ben and the kids had a good swim in the lake!

A relaxing day was probably needed as tomorrow we are driving 6-9 hours to Belgium! It’s a 6 hour drive to Bruges from where we are in Germany, but Ben is keen to drive a more scenic route along the coast as the long drives we’ve had through Europe so far have been pretty bland scenery wise!

I am also excited to get to Bruges and see something new as we’ve had two pretty still and quiet days in Germany. It’s been amazing to see Ben’s gran which was the purpose of our visit in Germany, but I’m ready for more adventuring now!

Auf wiedersehen for now!