3-Day Spa Break in Rhineland-Palatinate: Holiday Home with Sauna

If you are looking for a 3-day spa break in Rhineland-Palatinate, you are usually not after a programme but a pause. Three days when nobody wants anything from you, when no alarm goes off, and when the longest decision of the day is whether to get into the sauna now or after dinner.

We let three holiday homes in Rieden, in the volcanic region around the Laacher See. This article is not a list of everything you could squeeze into three days. It describes how those three days actually go with us, and what you will not get in return.

Day one: arrive and plan nothing else

From Bonn the drive takes around 50 minutes, from Cologne a good hour, from Düsseldorf and Aachen around an hour and a half, from Eindhoven around two and a half. On a short stay that matters more than anything else: set off in the early afternoon and you will be sitting on the terrace by evening, with the whole first evening ahead of you.

The house is ready from 15:00. On the table you will find a welcome gift with wine from the region and specialities from the Eifel, and the firewood is laid ready by the wood-burning stove.

Our advice for the first hour: light the sauna first, then unpack. An outdoor sauna needs time to heat up, half an hour to an hour depending on the temperature outside. Switch it on the moment you arrive and you can unpack and cook in peace, then step in at the end of the evening instead of waiting in a bathrobe in front of a cold cabin.

One practical point in advance, because otherwise it catches you out on exactly that first evening: Rieden has a bakery and a butcher, but no supermarket. Do the bigger shop on the way. If you would rather not cook at all on arrival day, there are two restaurants within walking distance, the Al Lago around four minutes away and the Eifeler Seehütte around eight.

After that, nothing else happens. Sauna, terrace, fire. That is enough for the first evening, and most guests keep to the same order for the remaining two days.

The sauna belongs to you, not to the house

The difference from a hotel spa fits into one sentence: there are no opening hours.

The sauna stands free-standing on your own terrace, behind the fence that belongs to the house. You sign up with nobody, share the space with nobody and never have to debate towels or swimming costumes. If you fancy one more session at 23:00 after a long evening, you have one more session. If you want to start at eight in the morning, that works too.

The second difference is the cooling off. Two steps beyond the cabin door and you are in the fresh air, genuinely outdoors, not in a heated basement corridor lined with showers. Stepping out of a hot cabin into a clear, cold winter night at the edge of the woods is the real reason guests come to us in January rather than in July.

There is also the whirlpool bath in the bathroom. That is the option for the evening when the rain has set in outside and nobody feels like lighting a fire any more.

How your own outdoor sauna works in practice, from heating it up to the right order of sessions and the cases in which sauna bathing is not advisable, is covered in detail in our article on a holiday home with a sauna.

Day two: out all day, back inside in the evening

The Riedener Waldsee is around 150 metres from the door. A path runs around the shore, in summer there is a bathing beach with a lawn, and in November you usually have it to yourselves.

The Traumpfad Waldseepfad begins around 100 metres from the house. This is the point we have to explain most often, because it is unusual: you need no car journey to start, no walkers’ car park and no hunt for the trailhead. You put your boots on, walk out of the door and you are on the trail.

That is what makes the rhythm these houses were built for work. Out in the morning, back in the afternoon, light the sauna, nothing more in the evening. After four or five hours on a wet autumn trail, your own cabin is something else entirely compared with a day on the sofa. That is the part a hotel spa with a booking list at 16:00 cannot deliver.

If you would rather drive than walk: Mayen is around 15 minutes away, the Nürburgring around 25, Koblenz around 30. And if you do fancy the full programme with several cabins and a sauna master, set aside half a day for it. Which thermal baths are nearby, what they cost and who they suit is covered in our article on spa breaks in the Eifel.

Our honest observation: most guests who plan a day at the thermal baths never actually go. Your own sauna is two steps away, the thermal baths mean a drive there and back plus the entrance fee.

Day three: let it wind down slowly

The third day is the one on which the least happens, and the one that makes the whole stay worthwhile.

A long breakfast. One more walk around the lake. In the afternoon, settle into the hooded beach chair on the terrace, even in October, because that is what it was built for. One family of guests wrote in our guest book: “I loved the hooded beach chair, I had no idea how cosy one of those is." In the evening, the last sauna session, and after that the last evening by the fire.

We spell this out because many guests fill the third day with plans and undo the effect of the first two. Three days off are not a sightseeing itinerary. The body usually only notices on the third day that it is having a break.

Check-out is by 10:00. There is no cleaning to do and nothing to prepare.

What you will not get with us

This belongs in this article, because otherwise it leads to disappointment once you are here:

• No treatments, no massage, no beauty therapy. We have no spa area and no staff for one.
• No restaurant on site, no half board, no breakfast buffet. The kitchen is fully equipped, and for everything else there are the two restaurants by the lake.
• No sauna complex, no swimming pool, no scheduled sauna rituals. One cabin, and it is yours.
• No reception desk and no room service. You reach us directly by phone, not through a switchboard.

If you want to book a treatment and sit in the hotel’s own restaurant in the evening, a spa hotel will suit you better. That is not false modesty, it is simply a different kind of holiday, and both have their place.

What you get instead is availability and privacy. The sauna, whirlpool bath and wood-burning stove are yours alone for all three days, with no time slots, no waiting and no strangers in the room.

Who a spa weekend in Rhineland-Palatinate with us suits

For couples. Susi is the house for two to four guests and the obvious choice if there are two of you. Annika and Tommy are the larger ones, for when two couples travel together.

For guests who mean peace and quiet literally. The houses stand at the edge of the village above the lake, in a street called Sonnenterrasse. In the evening you can hear the woods.

For autumn and winter. With us that is the real season for this kind of stay. The colder it is outside, the better the combination of outdoor sauna, terrace and wood-burning stove works. In July guests tend to use the lake and the whirlpool bath, and the sauna becomes a bonus rather than the main reason to come.

For dog owners. Up to two dogs travel free of charge, and the terrace of every house is fenced.

The three homes

Susi with 82 square metres for two to four guests, Annika and Tommy with 100 square metres each for up to six. All three stand side by side. Every house has the free-standing outdoor sauna on the fenced terrace, the whirlpool bath in the bathroom and the wood-burning stove with firewood ready to use, plus a hooded beach chair and barbecue, free Wi-Fi and an EV charging point. The living area is on the ground floor in all three houses.

At Tommy the sauna area is covered and connected to a lounge corner. That is the option for the days when it rains without a break.

Bathrobes and towels are provided in the house and everything you need for an aufguss is ready for you; please bring your own sauna towels.

Prices start at 195 euros per night, and that is per house, not per person. We let from three nights, and you can arrive Monday to Saturday. Any current special offers are listed on the offers page, and you will find the three houses with all the photos and floor plans under Holiday Homes.

If you are not sure which house suits your three days, just give us a call. We are Susanne, Carmen and David Hahn, and you reach us directly.