Trying to catch up on some posts, we thought we'd add a few from some of our travels. One of the great things about being here is that everything is so close. Most of the sights in the Netherlands are within a 2 hour radius. Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Germany & France are within 5 hours or less.

Exploring the Netherlands has been fun -- there are many really nice towns with central squares that are great for relaxing at an outdoor cafe and shopping the markets. Some of our favorites are Gouda (yes, like the cheese, but it's not pronounced anything like Americans would say it), Delft (famous for the blue/white pottery), s'Hertogenbosch (luckily the dutch call it Den Bosch), Maastricht, and Zutphen. Here's a picture of Gouda's beautiful Stadhuis, dating from the 15th century.

The Netherlands isn't really known for it's castles, but there are a few castles and ruins scattered throughout the country. We visited Kasteel Huis Bergh in the eastern part of the country (the current building dates from the 17oo's) ... here's a photo of the castle and Rochelle peeking out after we climbed the stairs to the tower. The tour was only in dutch so we can't tell you much of the tower's history. We just smiled politely while the tourguide took us through the narrow staircases and showed some of the armaments from the castle's history.


We stayed overnight in Arnhem, enjoying a great Thai dinner thanks to a reco from one of Rochelle's colleagues. We found a little pub and enjoyed a few good games of darts. The next day we stopped at one of the British war cemeteries -- this area saw a lot of action in WWII. The battles portrayed in "A Bridge Too Far" happened here, and we've since found out that the movie is a Christmas tradition in Great Britain. A group of Canadians had just been there and had placed a Canadian/Dutch flag pin on all of the Canadian graves. It's amazing how much war history surrounds us here and there'll be more in future posts.