When I was younger my family traveled around Europe a lot. Every school break meant Euro-camping in a new place. My mother planned all the vacations six months ahead so we would get nice camping spaces and not have to walk a mile to the nearest restroom.

I was four the year we visited the Netherlands. The campsite was located on a hill and had an amusement park attached. The smell of popcorn and cotton candy filled the air surrounding the park.

“What do you want to do first?” my mother asked at every camp site we stayed.

The obvious answer from both my brother and I was “Amusement park!”

It turned out that not only was the amusement park full of little kid-sized rides, but it also had an indoor swimming pool with slides I could never have imagined. I was too small to go down these slides, but I watched with amazement as my father and brother circled down them into the water below.

The biggest of all these slides was a bowl shaped one with a hole in the middle. A person would shoot out of a slide near the top and circle around the bowl until they would reach the hole and fall through into the deep water.

My brother and father rode this slide for hours as my mother and I floated around or went down smaller slides that were kid-sized.

We woke up early everyday so that we could spend hours in the amusement park. Hitting the whack-a-moles or swimming in the water park.

Our breakfasts consisted of pancakes made on the small stove inside the tent and milk that was dropped at the opening in European style milk jars. The typical lunch was canned cheese and crackers or something delicious from a nearby bakery.

The camp site “office” was also stocked full of board games that were available to the public for the evenings after the amusement park was closed.

Not only were the camping facilities in the Holland Euro-camp clean enough for a germ phobic human, but the amusement/water park kept people coming back year after year.