Last week I had the week off, so me and my girlfriend decided to spend one night somewhere special. When we were looking we saw some amazing places that you can stay in, from a lighthouse to a wine barrel. From a plane to a castle. We ended up sleeping in a castle: Kasteel Hattem.

Sleeping in a castle

Normally you pick the destination because of stuff you want to do, or see there. This time we picked the destination because of how we’d stay there. So we ended up in Roermond.

Roermond

Roermond did not disappoint though. As a city next to the river Roer, and later the Meuse (Maas) as well, it was rather prosper. They probably built a lot of awesome buildings then, but various fires destroyed the city time after time. From about 1500 they had a marvellous idea: lets build some buildings of stone, rather then wood. The oldest buildings are from that time, often with cellars from 1300.

Situated near the border of the Netherlands, it has had it’s fair share of war. If you happened to be born around 1790, and lived in Roermond, you would have been Austrian, French, Limburgs, Belgian and finally Dutch.

Anyway, enough with the words. Here are some nice pictures. Some taken with a proper camera, some with my cellphone.

All in all it was a very nice outing. It had been a while since we went somewhere for multiple days, last time was our London trip. Going to a place without reading up, without knowing where to go, and just going with the flow is something you should do once in a while ;-).