Week 56: Memorial Day Weekend Roadtrip

For Memorial Day Weekend, we headed north. Our first stop was in Brussels, Belgium. Brussels is the capital of Belgium and also home to much of the management of the European Union. We made only a short stop in Brussels, primarily to see the Grand Place, which is a large city square surrounded by the city hall and old guild halls.

The Town Hall from Brussels's Grand Place

From there, we drove toward the Belgian coast and Bruges. Bruges has a large number of canals and buildings that are 100s of years old--most of its medieval buildings are still intact. We spent the evening wandering around the city and found an Italian restaurant for dinner. One thing that was very interesting about Bruges, as opposed to other cities we have been to in Europe, was that the train station was located about a 15 minute walk from the downtown. The city encourages people to park at the train station and take the bus into the town, by giving you free bus fare with your parking ticket. Not bad at all, as it looked pretty impossible to park on the narrow, cobblestoned roads.

A canal in Bruge

Much like New Hampshire, Belgium is quite proud of its diminutive coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. It stretches about 42 miles between France and the Netherlands, with the coast of England only about 84 miles away. We quickly visited the cost north of Bruges, where a ferry brings over UK tourists for a trip to the beach. As you can see, the beach is pretty enormous. We were there at the start of the season, so while there were a number of people relaxing in beach chairs, there wasn't the dense crowds that would be likely later in the summer.

Beach in Belgium

From the Belgian coast, we drove up to The Netherlands, staying on the coast for a bit and even running into a jazz festival in one of the small towns we drove through, where we stopped to have fish, fries and ice cream. Belgium is where fries were invented. They do a sort of double-frying of the potatoes, which results in a fantastically crispy fry. Yum!

Rainbow Over Netherlands

From the coast, we worked our way inland to Grave, Netherlands. We discovered that this area was the focus of Operation Market Garden, during World War II and the bridge featured in A Bridge Too Far, was located only a few miles from where we stayed. We stayed on the edge of Grave and spent the next day and a half riding our bikes around the wonderfully flat Netherlands.

Hey! We found a castle!

The weather was fantastic, so we did a multi-hour ride each on Sunday and Monday. On each day, we spent some time riding along canals and, also, on each day, took a ferry across so we could do a nice loop. We had plenty of company, including roving bands of bikers with matching bikes and uniforms speeding along with skinny tires and tight spandex.

Bike Ferry Across a Canal

Unfortunately, all vacations, and especially short ones, come to an end. On our way home, though, we hit another triple point. Our last triple point was between Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium. This time, it was between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. This site was a bit more developed than the first and included a number of playgrounds, amusement rides, places to drink coffee and towers to climb to the top of. Part of the attraction was that this spot is not only a triple point, but is also the highest spot in The Netherlands. This point is at 322 meters, just over 100 meters higher than the highest point in Rhode Island.

Just guess which of the 3 countries I am in...