Blair's Blog

Next stop on our European adventures is Germany. This was Dave’s request as he wanted to experience driving the Auto Bahn. So after leaving Holland I relinquished the wheel of our French rental car (a scenic Renault) for Dave to experience a road with no speed limits. Which in theory sounded good but in practice was quickly deterred by German road construction and the route into Cologne being detoured. As we have been learning on this trip you sometimes have to go with the flow. In our case we wound up taking the cable car across the Rhine and walking along the river where there were plenty of geological specimens to practice rock skipping with. Eins, zwei, drei … WERFEN!!

Skipping on the Rhine

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Sadly, not for the TT…  We were a week late for the motorbike racing. On the other hand, we were too early for the bowling.
After leaving our friends in the Groningen area after breakfast on Monday, we started to head south to our next stop in Assen. Brenda’s maternal grandparents lived in Assen, and their house is still standing. It is now a bowling alley! The bowling didn’t open until later in the day, otherwise we would have played a game in great-Oma Pilot’s parlour.
We walked through old Assen and found the church and Bartje. Bartje is a character from an old Dutch book, a small child from a poor family who is best known for his dislike for brown beans.  Anyway, it was very exciting for Brenda, as she remembered her Oma having a little a small statue of Bartje – now Brenda has one as well!

From Assen, we continued south to Holten, where we visited a Canadian war cemetery, then to Teuge where we found a memorial to an allied bomber crew that had crashed in the war. Eventually, we arrived in Arnhem where we had an invitation to stay with a cousin of Brenda’s mom. Romina and her husband Cees, have made us feel very welcome.

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Since the weekend, we have been quite busy so I have fallen behind on the posts. After a very full day touring Amsterdam with one of Brenda’s second cousins, Joost, we drove up to the north of the country late Saturday afternoon.
We arrived in Lageland, near Groningen, in time for a nice backyard BBQ as the heat of the day eased.  It was very good to catch up with the Nijeboer’s who used to live in Calgary about 7 years ago.

We stayed 2 nights and on Sunday toured the country-side around Groningen. To me, this part of the trip seemed to look and feel like what I pictured Holland to be in my mind – verdant fields dotted with dairy cows, tree lined lanes leading to tiny villages with cobblestone streets, and windmills overlooking canals.

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We did not have a long time in Amsterdam. Less than 24 hours. Turns out that was not too much a bad thing as we didn’t have to pay too much for parking. At 36 euros per 24 hour period it wouldn’t take long to pay for the price of the car!
Something the kids have noticed about Europe is all the spiral staircases. Amsterdam was no exception. Alyssa was extremely disappointed that the set in this church had bars on it preventing her from climbing all the way up.

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