A Trip to Aachen (Aix-de-Chapelle)

One of the fun things that I got to do while I was in the Netherlands was to go over to Germany.  I had a discount card for the trains which meant that it was really cheap to travel most places.  So I decided that I wanted to go as far south in the Netherlands as I could.  This happens to be Maastricht, by quite a lot.

This map shows Rotterdam in relation to Aachen.  The Netherlands is outlined in orange and Belgium is outlined in yellow.  Germany is to the right. 

Then, when I was doing some pre-travel research, I realized that I could head over to Germany really easily. There is a bus service that runs between Maastricht and Aachen and the round-trip fare was 7,50 euros (about $10).  The buses ran every half-hour for most of the day, which made travel planning super-convenient.  I was psyched to check out Germany and to see if their brats were as good as I remembered.

 One of the big tourist attractions near Aachen is the Three-Country Point (which is circled in red above).  At this point, you can stand in Gemany, Belgium, and the Netherlands at the same time.  They have a maze, a picnic area, and a museum.  That point is also about two miles away from the highest point in the Netherlands--Vaalserberg (Mount Vaals).  You can see some information about the Drielandenpunt here.

The map below shows (more or less) the route I took around Aachen, checking out the different big, famous buildings and tourist attractions.






This is a video tour of Aachen.  It is kind of long (about 8 minutes) and the music is really annoying but it does show a lot of the city that I walked around while I was there, including some of the famous historical videos.