Harz National Park – Holiday with Dog!
The one with the wagg-ly tail…
OMG I’m mortified. I just realised it has been over a year since we went to the Harz National Park in Germany and we still haven’t told you about our lovely little holiday with dog.
Five of us squeezed into a car and Jason drove us to the middle of Germany. We stayed in a tiny town called Quedlinburg – a medival town with UNESCO status. We rented out a lovely and very odd house – some of the furniture was hundreds of years old and it meant we could cook and play games all night if we wanted to. The town is quaint and the houses all so different. Some of them are all wonky and if you take a wander down the cobbled streets, you will come across streams, beautiful bridges and the tiniest doors!
The Baumkuchen is pretty famous, so we tried and enjoyed it whilst sitting at the fountain in the middle square. It’s lovely just to wander around in the evenings and we didn’t bump into any tourists at all, so all the restaurants were nice and empty. We spent a day exploring and went up to the castle – you can actually go up 88 beautiful steep old-style steps to the Café Münzenberg and it has a lovely view as well as delicious hot chocolate.
We only had a few days and the dog wanted to hike, so up the Brocken Mountain we went. It’s the highest peak in Northern Germany, but didn’t feel like a hike at all. It’s a long winding path upwards, but the incline is barely noticeable. Vincent the dog ran the whole way up, the rest of us slowly made our way upwards – the path went from forests, to rocks to sand alongside magnificent views. One of my favourite ever photos of Jason and I was taken near the top.
Just to warn you all though, as we rose higher and higher, it got colder and colder and in April 2014 it was snowing at the top! Very unexpected! There’s a little pricey restaurant at the summit, so we grabbed some chips and then paid an extortionate price to take the steam train back down the hill. It seems most people take the train up and walk down, but… I guess we like to be different 😉
The train is actually quite fun. It’s old-fashioned and toots at the people on their climb. We were all so cold and tired, every single one of us fell fast asleep on the short journey. We stopped off on the way home to get ice cream and check out another cute town called Harzgerode and that was it for our little fairytale trip to the Harz. If you’re looking for a lovely get-a-way with hiking, quaint towns and good hearty German food, go to Quedlinburg.
