I never thought I would be that kind of parent. The parent without inspiration who would go on a holiday to Center Parcs. But I have to admit… from the moment our little angel was born, the boyfriend was teasing me with it. And the more I started thinking about going back to work and not seeing my baby grow up anymore (or at least not every second of every day), the more Center Parcs started to grow on me. So I looked into it and decided to book a stay there as a stop-over to the house of my in-laws in France: Center Parcs Les Hauts de Bruyères.

Our stay here was actually very nice. Our ride to get there was… not. Les Hauts de Bruyères is located just under Orléans. To get form Belgium to Orléans (and Les Hauts de Bruyères) you have to pass Paris. Big nope! Or at least in our minds, because it always means drama. Big drama. And with a baby in the car it means BIGGER drama.

Google Maps told us it was a 4h/4h30 drive to get to our destination. Real life took us about 7h/7h30 to get where we needed to be. Including a headache, a tired and screaming baby and two people who wanted to go home instead of staying here for four nights. The same goes for our way back… with two car accidents on the road… well let’s say it was ugly. Really ugly.

But our stay was not! I haven’t got a lot of pictures to sell, because on most pictures there’s a little baby in the way (and very little scenery to be honest) so it wouldn’t be any good. We stayed in a cottage near the center (specifically asked) so we didn’t had to walk very far to get to places. With a baby that’s still being breastfed (every 2-3 hours) that came in handy! The first few days were really calm, as the holiday season wasn’t started yet. So it almost felt like we had to whole park to ourselves. We decided to do some minigolfing (which was actually the only thing we could do with our activity vouchers we got – because we booked early – and a baby with us). The boyfriend won our game of minigolf, but I did manage to get a hole-in-one as well – so who cares, right?

We also enjoyed the babyswimming they provided. And We all had a lot of fun. Emiel loved begin in the water, our instructor was really charming and sweet with the babies. We were only with three little ones and one older toddler – so that was actually a great group size. Apart from guiding the baby on his belly or back in the water, and make him go under water for a very short amount of time (not even a second) we also had the chance to take them with us on the slides. Our little one enjoyed that the most, with giggles as a result.

They also had a little farm for children with chickens, some goats, rabbits, … but as our little one was still a little too young and the day we wanted to actually visit the place, it was packed with some older teenagers who were trashing the place … we decided to skip that and just take a little walk around the lake. If I have to state one point of criticism, it’s the lack of control … there were a lot of cars passing by … all the time. Not only for dropping the luggage of when arriving, or filling up the car when leaving. There was sometimes a lot of  noise after 10 PM as well… But I guess you can’t have it all?

We will come back to Center Parcs again, however we will not come back to this park again. Mainly because of its location – for us that is.