Weeze

So, we recently went to Rome, which has been a dream of mine for a very long time. Tickets this time of year are more expensive, so we tried to save a little money by flying RyanAir, which flew from a little airport called Düsseldorf-Weeze. We checked to see how far away this airport was, and it was a little further than the city of Düsseldorf itself, but according to Google Maps, noooo problem. Turns out though that by "saving money" and flying from this airport, we were creating a little problem for ourselves because you see, the only time we could arrive in this place from Münster was at 8:30am. No problem, right? Well, yes problem, because our flight left at 7am. So we had to leave super early the day before and then plan to spend an entire day in this non-destination destination. 

So we did. Our FlixBus was scheduled to leave at 6:45, but was a little late. We drove south, and west until we were aaaalllllmost in the Netherlands, and then stopped in the other small town of Emmerich. 

Now in Emmerich they told us that we were unable to get to Weeze easily, and that the only way to get there was to take... the very same FlixBus we'd been on that morning (which hadn't been an option when we booked the bus initially). So instead of doing that (since we couldn't), we took a city bus to Cleve (also written as Kleve).

From Kleve we took the train (and it is impossible to get on the wrong train because they have just ONE train route that goes through there and it runs every 30 minutes) to the city of Weeze (which we pronounced as "wheeze" knowing this was incorrect. It's actually said more like "Vitza", rhyming with "Pizza"). By this time, it was 10:30am. All well and good except that our hotel was at the Weeze Airport and not in Weeze itself. So we could take a bus to the airport hotel, which we couldn't actually enter until 3pm, or we could park ourselves in Weeze for a few hours. It was a bustling metropolis, as seen below.

We took option B, and sat in the cafe of the local Rewe (name for a grocery store) for approximately three hours, and then we sat outside the Rewe in the sunshine watching the fountain for approximately one hour, before we trudged over to the buses. 

When we got to the bus stop with our bags, about four people yelled over from across the street and from nearby windows and asked if we were headed to the airport. We answered in the affirmative and they said that we were in the wrong spot and that we had to hurry because the bus only comes once an hour and it's leaving RIGHT NOW. So we hurried, and thankfully these friends-in-the-window also yelled down to the bus driver and told him to hang on. He did (commonly here, buses and trains will leave at the exact time they're scheduled to leave, and even if you're running up and banging on the side and they see you, they will still leave without you, so this is noteworthy). 

So we arrived at the Best Deal Airport Hotel, which I believe was also the only airport hotel (which makes it both the best AND worst deal, I guess). They don't have a front desk, just a little ATM looking thing where you check in electronically and then the doors let you in. Thankfully, we had no issues with this system and got into our room a little before the supposed strict time of 3pm.

I took a shower and then a long nap. Carson also took a nap, and then studied a bit. 

We walked over to the airport because the hotel has two vending machines and lists the airport as the closest restaurant. It was not bustlings. They had one restaurant before security and three vending machines inside. Thankfully we knew about the whole limited food thing, and had grabbed dinner/snack options at Rewe before we headed to the airport.

The airport had a "kiss and fly" option which I think really means "drop off but leave your car running"... but the whole parking lot and even cell phone lot (which was next to the parking lot) probably had 100 cars total, so I don't think it would matter if you parked or not. Anyway, we thought the term was funny so Carson suggested a picture.

From what I understand, this airport used to be the airport of a small military base. So the hotel we stayed in was a part of the complex (some of the online reviews say it was formerly a prison but I'm not sure about that), and there's a military museum (open for three hours on Thursday and Friday), along with a bunch of other repurposed buildings. Carson enjoyed poking around some of the more deserted buildings, while I wasn't as much of a fan.

We went to bed early that night after a dinner of hummus, pita chips and berries. We felt like this was the best we could do since there wasn't a fridge or microwave in our hotel room (it's not super common to have those things in a German hotel) and it was pretty filling.

The next morning, we headed to the airport at 5:45. When the walk there takes you 10 minutes and you know it's not going to be crazy busy, sometimes you get as much sleep as you possibly can before your 7am flight!

And that concludes our time in Weeze. We flew back through Cologne, so we didn't get to have an equally delightful trip back home :)