Day 8

Day 8

The final day of the tour has begun...the kids don’t like it but every once in awhile I announce “18 hours to departure” , a little further on “16 hours to departure.” All in fun!! Actually our day started with a quick trip to the hospital in Ede, Netherlands to pick up our good friend Sam, the kids were very excited to see him and we certainly relived to know that he was ok.

Since it was on the way to today’s first destination, it actually worked out perfect. Sam was able to have a shower and I brought the necessary essentials for the day, camera, tripod and iPod, oh yeah clean socks and underwear. I promised you Susan and Phillip that I would look after him!!

Our first destination was the Royal Palace at Appledoorn. Although not directly tied into the studies of World War II, we all know the connection to the Royal Palace from a Canadian perspective. If you are unsure read on, I will fill you in.

During the early portion of the Dutch campaign, the Royal family of the Netherlands lead by Queen Wilhelmina fled to England to escape the Nazi invasion. After issues relating to the air assault on England the Royal family fled to Ottawa. The royal family resided in Canada roughly to the end of the second war with little or no issues. However, throughout their stay the Princess Juliana was pregnant and the issue now was that the Royals wanted the child to be born in the Netherlands. In agreement with the Dutch Royal Family, the room and ward in the Ottawa hospital would be temporarily turned into international territory so that the newborn would still only hold Dutch nationality. In January of 1943, Princess Margriet of the Netherlands was born on international soil (in the Ottawa Civic Hospital) and thus claimed the nationality of her mother, Queen Juliana.

Attached above is a video of the famous Het Loo(pronounced low) Palace at Appledorn, just to give you a sense of what we saw today. As you can see the palace and its grounds are quite a site to see, but according to Brendan after just entering the main gates of Het Loo, the palace itself was not nearly as impressive as Versailles or Buckingham Palace. I remarked to Brendan that is because the Dutch are not as stuffy and pompous as the British are and that he should comment on that to our tour director David Harrod, who hails from Britain.

I just didn’t have the heart to tell Brendan that where we walked in and walked around first.......was only the horses stable. As he rounded the corner and looked down a row of large trees, we could see off in the distance(about 350 yards away...my oh my I miss my golf!) a very large gold leafed monstrous palace, where the people actually lived. “My now that is rather is impressive,” was the next line from Brendan’s mouth, “I guess I didn’t realize that first establishment was only for the horses!” I thought I was going to pee my pants!!! Brendan officially thinks that Het Loo is good enough for a royal family! One last story about the Palace and then I will move on.

At this point I am sure Brendan thinks I am nuts!!! After making ridiculous comments on anything from architecture to food, I am sure he thinks I am crazy. In and around the stable area there is a large bird cage. A couple of the animals, slower moving ones, wander about outside of the confines of the cage. These beautiful birds are peacocks and they are quite tame and you can get pretty close to them as you will see by some pictures. As we left the area, Brendan, he really should know better after a week of my crazy initial answers, asked where the peacocks are native to. “Well Brendan that is a good question, the peacock is actually the native bird of..............(denotes long pause and I have him suspended on the next word out of my mouth) Tignish!!!”(with a completely straight face and rather convincing tone I might add. The straight face, slowly turning into a smirk received the next comment, “Mr. Chisholm, you are crazy!!!” and with a gigantic smile on his face he scampered to the bus. The week has been a lot of fun for sure! Sorry about dragging it on, but this is also somewhat of a diary for me as well!!!

From Appledoorn we were back into the WWII history books into such places as Arnhem, Market Garden, Oosterbeek, and back to Groesbeek cemetery. WE picked up a tour guide just outside of Oosterbeek and we had her for the next couple of hours. The kids are very tired but they have been very respectful of the tour guides and most we able to stay awake for the tour. During this tour we were able to hear about how the whole invasion took place, Canadian and American roles, and as well as local stories of people (our local guides father as matter of fact) during this time in WWII.

I will not bore you with all of the details of the campaign, but I will tell you we visited a 1000 year old church that was used by Canadians and Americans near the Rheine River during the battle of Market Garden. As well we were able to see many memorials throughout the region, the famous Arnhem bridge from the movie “A Bridge too Far” and a highlight for me, Oosterbeek cemetery. Oosterbeek cemetery has very few Canadians in it, but it is home to 3 Victoria Cross winners. I have only seen I VC winner in all my travels to military cemeteries, so this is rare as far as I know. After a quick stop we were able to do grave rubbings of two VC’s and then move on back to Groesbeek.

This was not on our schedule but I wanted the kids to get a better look at this place because we were only here for the ceremony the other night and with 3000 people present it was hard to move around. This cemetery is the largest in the Netherlands and contains many Islanders who gave their lives in the liberation of the Netherlands. This is why I needed to come back here. We were able to get a number of rubbings of locals, we hope, and the kids are determined to make some connections when they get back home.

I hate to be ripping through this part but I need to be up in a couple of hours to get to the airport, so I am destined to complete any more thoughts in my final blog tomorrow evening before we return home. The week has been busy, the kids have been great and we are all ready to see our loved ones, and my new puppy who I just saw on webcam a couple of minutes ago!!!! Take care and we will chat in person soon, with hopefully one final update(whether you like it or not!) to come tomorrow evening in Toronto!

dc(dog-owning chizzy)