The Benelux Adventure

While most of my fellow Muslims celebrating hari raya, me and family have nothing better to do besides embarking another journey to unfamiliar side of the world, what I called The Benelux Adventure :). Benelux, the short form for Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, is very small in area indeed. It only takes 2-3 hours driving to reach the capital from one country to another. Our journey started from London and our base for the whole journey was in Lille, France.

Dover-Dunkerque

It is much cheaper to cross English Channel
through ferry services. We booked the Norfolk Line Ferry service via online and it cost us around 90 pounds per car for return trip journey. The journey from Dover (UK) – Dunkerque (France) took around 2 hours. The ferry surprisingly equipped with all sorts of facilities considering it is just a short trip ferry service. Feeling like I was in cruise ship vacation..hehe


Lille, France.

Lille is just 1 hour away from Dunkerque and the location has a considerable distance to Luxembourg, Belgium and The Netherlands. The accommodation is cheap as well and therefore picking Lille as our base for the whole journey was a practical choice. The city itself has many tourist attractions. Unfortunately,
we could only spend a limited amount of time visiting the city as our main objective was to travel around Benelux.

Luxembourg

Do you know Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita in the world? Basically it means averagely Luxembourg’s citizens have the highest purchasing power as compared to the rest of the world. Anyway, Luxembourg is really tiny and the capital is just like an old European village. Frankly, the capital has nothing much to offer and the whole city tour only took around 1-2 hours to be completed.

Brussels, Belgium

This was my 2^nd visits to Brussels. What I really like about Brussels is the Gothic architecture that the city has to offer. It is really unique, a bit distinctive from regular European architecture.

Rotterdam & The Hague, The Netherlands

One thing that attracted me most was the cycling culture in the cities all over The Netherlands. There are parking for bicycles, road, traffic lights and it is just weird. Anyway, the weather here may enable them to ride a bicycle as a mean of transportation and definitely not feasible in Malaysia’s humid and wet weather.Rotterdam and The Hague is just 30 km apart from one another.Rotterdam is famous for its largest port in Europe while The Hague or Den Haag is the administration city in Holland just like Putrajaya in Malaysia. The large part of Holland has been reclaimed from the sea and this has led to the saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.


I intend to share my experiences on my previous European adventures in my next blog. Those trips covered many more European cities such as (Part 1 - Berlin,Munich,Zurich,Interlaken, Paris, Amsterdam), (Part 2 – Paris,Bern,Venice, Frankfurt), (Part 3 Paris,Madrid,Lisbon,Barcelona). So for travel freaks out there, stay tune :).