In the fall of 2021, we spent a lovely week near the Lüneburger Heide natural park mostly by chance. One of my favorite childhood memories is going to summer camp, but since we spend our summer vacations travelling, our girls don’t really have the opportunity. But they also have a two week fall break every year, so I started looking around to see if sleepover camp was an option during that time. After much research, I stumbled upon Reiterhof Lünzen, in an area of the country we hadn’t explored much. I found some fun things in the area for the younger girls, so we packed up the camper and headed north. We dropped the big girls off at the horse camp which turned out to be a wonderful spot and the girls had a great week! And then we headed to our campground, Camping-Park Lüneburger Heide, a beautiful spot.

One day we headed over to the Wildpark Lüneburger Heide where we spent the day checking out the animals, playing on the playgrounds, watching the bird show and climbing through the forest on the “Baumwipfelpfad“. It was amazing!

While looking around in the area for places we could go, I happened upon Heide Park, an amusement park with a Peppa Pig Land! All of our girls have been Peppa Pig fans at some point in their childhood, and Luisa was still a fan at the time, so we kept it a surprise from her and headed over one day. Both Olivia and Luisa loved it! The park has some really big roller coasters that we skipped but also plenty for the younger crowd. And it is someplace we would love to go back to with the whole family, now that everyone is older, but haven’t managed a return visit yet.

To round up the trip we spent a couple of days exploring Hamburg. Whenever we go to a city, our main “activity” is walking, walking, walking. We love to get a feeling for the place by exploring various neighborhoods, taking in the architecture and finding a few fun things to do along the way. On this trip we did book two things in advance– a tour of the Steinway and Sons factory which was fascinating and especially fun for our two pianists–Olivia and Steffen. We were very lucky because at the time they were no longer doing tours for the public, but Steffen’s friend was able to call in a favor and we were very appreciative!

We also were able to book tickets for the “Miniatur Wonderland“, an elaborate train museum full of fascinating scenes and incredible creativity. Highly recommend for anyone making a trip to Hamburg! I think it was the third time Steffen and I had visited and we still enjoyed every minute.

Finally, as we walked around the city, we took a boat trip (luckily during the only downpour of the day), walked through the Elbphilharmonie, and spent a couple of hours at this eccentric children’s museum called Klick Kindermuseum. All in all a fun week and nice to have some extra time with the younger girls while the older girls got to have a new, exciting experience.