Lovely Limburg – how we spent our birthday holiday

Together with a lot of people I discovered spending your holidays in Belgium isn’t that bad. When the boyf and I turned 30 (!) – we were born two days apart – we decided to have a birthday holiday. You don’t turn 30 every year, right? 🙂 Since we currently can’t travel outside of Belgium, we decided to spend it in the Limburg province. We definitely made a good call, and the 3 super sunny almost-summer-like days were very welcome.

What did we do in Limburg?

Over the course of three days we did quite some different things. It did help that the weather was suuuper nice so we could walk, bike or inline skate a lot! The region offers quite some things to do inside, but because the weather was this nice we just had to spend as much time outside as possible.

Inline skate route between Genk and Hasselt

For our birthdays the boyf and I gave each other inline skates as a birthday present. Afterwards we learned about the route specifically for inline skating between Genk and Hasselt, which we just had to try it out. We’ll definitely need more practice, but we had a lot of fun.

National Park Hoge Kempen

When in Limburg you cannot not visit the only Belgian National Park. The park has 6 gateways, so we had to choose wisely. First we walked in Terhills (previously known as Connecterra) where we climbed to get an awesome panorama from the peak of a mining-stone hill. If you want to combine it with some shopping: Maasmechelen Village is only 5min away 😉

Biking is not possible in Terhills, but it is in other parts of the park. We decided to start our bike ride at As station, and just mix and match some junctions. After cycling in pine forests, climbing some hills and then enjoying the views, we stopped for a quick pastry at a bakery. We started at junction 41 and then followed 565 – 551 – 60 – 61 – 550 – 252 – 251 – 534 – 535 – 565 – 41. Apparently we were too early to go cycling through the heathland because they were still working on the new path. It will run from junction 551 to 550.

Lommelse Sahara

Previously there would be a lot of sand plains around the Lommelse Sahara. It was used to make glass in the past, but now it was given back to nature. We loved walking in the sand and combining it with walking between the pine trees. Might seem like a weird combination, but it was a lot of fun to do. You go from walking between trees to all of a sudden a large sand area with even a small beach.

There’s also a watch tower but the altitude fear and the heat got hold of me so we decided not to climb it, but seemed to be a worthwile view. 🙂

Visit an alpaca farm

This might have been the highlight of my birthday. Visiting an alpaca farm when you turn 30 must have been one of my best ideas so far. 😀 We were probably the eldest ones there without kids, but that wouldn’t diminish my enthousiasm. Especially the smallest ones were so fluffy! A common misconception is that alpacas love cuddling, but I learned they don’t. So no cuddling and only feeding them when they were interested in the nibbles by themselves.

What else to do in Limburg?

Since time was short and we went end of March we weren’t able to do some things:

• Cycling through Water in Bokrijk
• Street art tour in Hasselt via Street Art app
• Cycling through the Trees in Bosland
• Visit Alden Biesen, since it was a little too early for the fruit trees to bloom
• Visit Labiomista, since it only opened as from 1 April

… and so much more 🙂

Where did we stay in Limburg?

It actually all started when I came across a tweet that encouraged you to still take holidays in Belgium just for yourself. Someone mentioned they would stay in Warredal. It seemed like something the boyf and I would also enjoy for a holiday. We booked a cosy cabin, which is basically a tiny house in the woods. Their barbecue package was amazing and definitely worth the money. Every evening we would just sit outside until it was time to go to bed, enjoying some food and drinks. Unfortunately the drinks weren’t cooled because they work with cool boxes instead of fridges, which wasn’t cooled when we arrived. It seemed impossible to cool as well because there were never enough cooling elements available. We also bought the birthday package which contained a bottle of cava but we were never able to cool it properly.

Overall we had an amazing birthday holiday. Even though it wasn’t Germany, Slovenia or even Japan it will definitely become a fond memory. There are still quite some things we would like to do in the future, so I’ll definitely be back someday!

Have you ever been there? What should definitely be on our to visit list as well?

xo Noor