Ferienparadies Heidehof 

Feriënparadies Heidehof is run by the Dutch family Snijder. The family is very friendly and attentive, ready and able to support you with your every whim to make your holiday the most pleasant one. Upon arriving we got to see the vacation house we rented for three days, the Mrs. took us on a tour through the house and gave us plenty of time to interact and answer all of our questions. We stayed in a 2-to-3 person ground level house - we being my mum, myself and my little French Bulldog Chibi, an elderly lady but still happy and active. We were offered the option to order breakfast for the next morning (they have to know before 8PM, as around 6AM the bakery brings around the bread they order at night. But more on the breakfast later on. The vacation house offers plenty of room for us to move around, has a relaxing area with a (transformable) couch (which might dub as a bed for a third person) and a couple of relaxing chairs. In the next corner there is the entertainment area with a 24 inch 4:3 flatscreen TV, hooked up to a FTA (Free-to-air) satellite receiver and a DVD player. Rotating clockwise to the next corner we find a kitchen with microwave, hot and cold running water, glasses, mugs, plates and utensils, 2 electric cooking plates, a twin-toaster and a drip coffee machine. The advertised Senseo coffee machine was not there though and there also was no electric water cooker. There is, however, a very decent fridge. In the final corner we find a family table with four chairs, where one can have meals and get some work done. The adjacent bedroom offers plenty of closet space, a double bed (you share the same mattress) and ensuite there is a spacious modern combined bathroom: toilet, washing sink, towels and -rack and a showering cell are all there. On the front porch we find a good quality outdoor table completed with 4 sturdy chairs, below a roof. There’s plenty of decorative stuff for it to look cozy. Behind our own secluded lawn there’s a little meadow with a petting zoo in the rear. The petting zoo is still on German ground, as is the entire Heidehof complex, but behind the petting zoo lies the actual country border which allows access to the Belgian State Forest. A few words of caution when planning a stay: Though ‘everything’ is provided for, you will find a few rolls of toilet paper and plenty of towels, yet you have to bring your own handsoap, shower cream and shampoo. Though there are plenty of wall outlets on almost every wall, the quality of the Wireless Internet (WiFi) is very high, but the internet connection it provides matches a dialup connection in speed. In other words, the internet is extremely slow! Also, you get the first 300MB free access on each device you bring and as soon as you burn through that allowance the device is refused further access to the WiFi network. Contact one of the Snijder family (they live right next-door) to regain access - you will be charged € 2,50 for each 500MB you use.* Cellular reception from Belgium is near impossible and the German networks offer a slow 2G connection at best (signal drops in 90% of the time while indoor so better not expect any important calls or provide the landline number of Heidehof in case of emergencies). Lastly, the only food you will find here is the optional breakfast (billed separately). For the rest you will have to dine out or bring food along. Payment is cash only!! Make sure you carry plenty to take care of the bill!! All in all we had a more than pleasant stay at Feriënparadies Heidehof and will most definitely return here if we plan another trip to the German Eiffel. A few nearby places that are certainly worth a visit, apart from the breathtaking nature of course, are Monschau with historic and fully restored buildings and the village of Blankenheim, source of the river Ahr, the only place where a river starts in the basement of a medieval house. * To put things in perspective, an iPhone may take as much as 1 to 2 GB a day on moderate use or more on heavy use. An Android phone commonly ranges between 500MB and 1GB with a similar usage pattern. When connecting a tablet or laptop computer, the sky is - obviously - the limit, though I figure at a data rate around 600kbit/s, you could max out at roughly 5 to 6 GB a day, but as the brochure states the connection is not meant for that kind of heavy use and you would have to keep at it for the full 24 hours of the day. Be aware any device connected through WiFi thinks it’s on a flat-fee connection, leaving automatic updates and backups running in the background from any connected device. Adding 10 Euro a day for internet access is easy enough without even trying. Luckily, for the rest, this place is very affordable.. :)