Our Honeymoon - Wageningen and Arnhem
This is the Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen, now our favourite hotel and restaurant. Wageningen wasn't even on the map we were using, and we found the hotel by accident. It's a brand new five-star hotel, advertising itself as four-star initially, that had only been open in its current form for two months. We had an amazing dinner at the restaurant which surpassed all previous dining experiences in all regards, including the quality of food, wine pairing and perfect, friendly service. Our room and bathroom were both very large, in a simple modern design, with a thin flat screen TV at the foot of the bed and a high quality espresso machine. All aspects of our stay there were the best I've ever experienced.
In this room in the Hotel de Wereld, Canadians and Germans
signed documents in 1945 ending World War II
Our room, and below, two parts of our bathroom
The most comfy bed and fluffy pillows!
Back on the road ... Bill recognized this as being a war trench. The war had a big impact on this area, and there are many reminders of it everywhere. We visited the Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek.
Our companion for our picnic on the Airborne Museum grounds
This is the Arnhem (Oosterbeek) War Cemetery, which contains over 1,600 British burials, 80 from Poland, four each from Australia and New Zealand and over 30 from Canada. Seeing graves of 17-year-old Canadian soldiers so far from home quite affected me. A book there lists each person buried.
The famous bridge to Arnhem that many died defending
We stayed on Felix Reijmers' boat in Arnhem one night.
Inside the boat - the kitchen
Inside the boat - the lounge
We didn't try the boat's wee shower!
My tasty fruity drink was "Mort Subite" - Sudden Death!
In the Netherlands, even the fields have nice bike paths in them! Now if only they would do that in Saskatchewan. This field was part of the huge De Hoge Veluwe National Park near Arnhem. We spent a day there cycling on the extensive bicycle paths and visiting the Kröller-Müller Museum in the middle of the park.
Inside a huge sculpture in the park's sculpture garden
Another part of the same sculpture
Although we initially had planned to return to Amsterdam for our last night, the Golden Tulip charged a ridiculously high price for this European holiday weekend for rooms that were not that nice compared to others we'd stayed in, and other rooms were extremely scarce. Since we loved the Hotel de Wereld, we cycled back to Waginengen instead, which was a great decision. On the final night of our honeymoon, we had another blissful dinner, just as amazing as the first one. As you can see from Bill's expression in this photo, even our breakfast there was a blissful experience!
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