Is it already Tuesday, April 28? The time has flown by....
We woke up in Bastogne ( which is a good thing, since that's where we went to sleep...) and, as I posted on Facebook, we "strapped on the feed bag" once again for a marvelous European breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast, we began our adventures for the day.
We began by finding Mardasson, the WWII Memorial built to honor the Americans who freed Belgium from the Germans during the various battles of the Bulge campaign. The memorial is a huge structure in the shape of a five pointed star with many inscriptions detailing the events involving Bastogne and its liberation. Each state in the U.S. is recognized on the structure. One can (and two did) climb the spiral staircase to the top of the memorial and view the surrounding countryside from all directions. Very impressive. After that we toured the War Museum which was recently built. It has lots of great stuff, but the design is claustrophobic and jumbled and it is hard to work through it. We had trouble finding our way out!! Rather disappointing....
Our next goal was Kinderdyjk, a National Historic site. It is an amazing park and preservation site of old original windmills...19 to be exact. I was so excited to see what I had always envisioned Holland's windmills to be. Several of them were in operation and open for touring the inside. What a thrill to see the giant gears working as well as the living quarters for the family that operated the mill. We toured the area on a canal boat with stops along the way so we could hop on and hop off to take full advantage of the area. We viewed an excellent video on six screens that detailed the history of the Dutch windmill and the Kinderdyjk area. If you ever had the opportunity to visit this place. do it. It is so historical and is, at the same time, a storybook place.
We left Kinderdyjk for one of the high-speed freeways and headed for Den Haag (The Hague). It was late in the day and we scored a hotel, the Buildaburg Europa Hotel (name sort of reminds me of Build-a-Bear :) ). The room is tiny but well appointed and the bed seems to be quite comfy. It also has a normal shower!!!!
Tomorrow takes us to the Kuekenhof Gardens where millions of tulips are in full glory in April and May each year. Wayne has another surprise in store too.
We are still astonished by the massive number of trucks on the highways in Europe; hundreds line the freeways, mostly staying in the far right lane. No driving in the other lanes unless having to pass a very slow vehicle in the right lane.
More shenigans tomorrow!!
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