Into the Woods
September 2, 2018
We wanted to do something special and fun the last weekend before James Wilson starts school so we rented a car and drove about an hour away to Efteling, an amusement park/fairy tale land where all the attractions are based on legends, folk lore, and fairy tales.
We spent the day wandering through the Fairy Tale Forest, visiting each of the different fables, some of which were terrifying, (super creepy, in a good way) and some were just impossibly charming and beautiful. The park also has a bunch of different rides ranging from serious business roller coasters to little kid-friendly rides, but I was totally enchanted by the many gardens and forests.
There’s a pretty spectacular show that’s free with the price of admission but you have to reserve a spot because they close the gates when the stadium fills up. It was intense — flying acrobatics, charging horses (at one point a horse and rider were set on fire, which I wasn’t thrilled about), ravens, big sword fighting battles, and the slaying of a fire breathing dragon. The show is in Dutch but they have headsets that translate into English, not that it mattered — you didn’t really need to hear the story to know what was going on, which was fortunate because the attendant only gave us two headsets to share between the three of us, and said matter of factly, “It’s more convenient…. for us” which is perhaps the most emblematic Dutch sentence we’ve heard yet.
We ate SO MUCH incredible food. At one point we were eating freshly made mini dutch pancakes covered in melting butter, powdered sugar, Nutella and bananas and I told James and James Wilson that if we ever felt like life had lost its luster or that there was no point in going on, to remember these pancakes exist. We were seriously so lost in our pancakes I didn’t realize until we were scraping the plate that maybe I should have taken a picture.
Overall, Efteling is one of the best theme parks I’ve ever been to and I can’t wait to go back. Next time we’ll stay over night in one of the cottages that are on site.
There are probably several witches, trolls and goblins lurking an the weeds just behind the cAbins.🤡👹👺☠️☠️👽👻🦑🐁🌰
Yes, it’s highly likely.
Looks fabulous but I am not sure I would be brave enough to stay in one of the cottages. Too many strange things around the park.
LOL, those aren’t actually the cottages you can stay in, they’re still the attractions in the park. The cottages are really cute, and are just off the main grounds, similar to Knoebels.