GixxerJasen's father/son big summer road trip, on four wheels.

[Festus]

WOW!

That's all I keep coming back to.

[gixxerjasen]

This was pretty much a road trip day. Long day on the road driving up through France and into Belgium. I was in need of some coffee, and while stopping for gas I spotted a McDonalds. Not ideal, but it's coffee, right? I walked inside and the order tablets were all turned off and there was no one inside. We looked around in confusion for a minute before some folks walked in behind us and asked if they could help us. Turns out they aren't open for over another hour. Can't believe the doors were unlocked, if you do that here, you better be ready to serve people.

While stopped there I searched up an open coffee shop and we headed over there. I wish I'd have taken a photo of all of the French pastries on display, it was a huge beautiful case of delicious food.



On the way we stopped at a rest area and checked out the convenience store there for some unusual snacks for lunch. We found this one that was basically a jerkey sausage wrapped in bread. Not good, not bad, it filled the belly.





Once in Bastogne we stopped at the 101st Airborne Museum



They had a lot of museum artifacts set up in elaborate and lifelike dioramas. Lots of thought went into the displays of this museum.











This flag was cut down from one of the buildings by an American soldier when they arrived.



Best part of this museum is the Bombing Simulation Shelter. You go down into the basement and take a seat and then a sort of show starts. Lots of lights and full surround sound fully immerse you into being an ordinary citizen experiencing a bombing. Lots of subtle details like seeing the diffused tail lights through the curtains fade out as you hear a truck pull off and drive away. Things ramp up when you hear an AA gun arrive and start firing, then the sounds of the incoming bombers and all the activity on the street. When the bombs start dropping the room shakes, the chandelier starts swaying and the lights start going in and out. As a dad it was kind of emotional thinking of the other dads who were in basements trying to protect their families but at the mercy of luck as to whether or not the bomb would hit their house. Add on the fact that I knew I was safe and only experienced a couple of minutes and thinking of these folks dealing with this night after night. Definitely one of those experiences to check out if you are in the area. Very well done.





We got to Antwerp and I knew my hotel didn't have parking and we'd have to look for something. I figured, let's find the hotel and then we can start our search from there. We went down through a tunnel and then did a U to come back to the hotel. Google diverted us off the main road to a parallel road where there was lots of street parking, all occupied, and then suddenly we are driving on a bike path through a crowded square full of people giving us dirty looks. Thanks google. We made it thorugh and back into the tunnel to a parking garage where a comedy of issues came up that are hard to describe in text, but it was pretty stressful for a bit.

That said, on our way back to the hotel from the parking garage, I saw three more people driving on that same bike path through the square, so apparently, it's either a legit road, or it catches more people out than just me.

Here's the view out our hotel window. That McDonalds doesn't open until 10am and they don't serve breakfast. In a downtown area with lots of people up early leaving their apartments and going to work, it seems like they are missing out on a ton of money not being open for breakfast.

We made our way over to a square and sat down at a Turkish restaurant.



We ordered up the "Mixed Grill For Two" and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves sampling all sorts of stuff.





More Antwerp





We were off to bed, headed back into the Netherlands in the morning to see more stuff.

[gixxerjasen]

Side note that I forgot about: When checking into our hotel near the castle Neuschwanstein, I had a conversation with the lady operating the BnB. She asked where I was from and I told her that we were from the USA. She proceeds to tell us that her daughter lives in Denver and she's been to visit. Then she sighs and says "It's so beautiful there." I stood there with my jaw on the floor thinking "Lady, do you realize where you live?!?!?!" Guess the grass is always greener.

[wheatonFJR]

AWESOME!!!

[Intech]

More good stuff!

[bigjohnsd]

Keeps getting better!

[escapefjrtist]

Incredible adventure Jasen. Well done!

~G

[Festus]

One thing that struct me as awesome was that your son has so much interest in history. That’s incredible. You and your wife did a great job!

[gixxerjasen]

One thing that struct me as awesome was that your son has so much interest in history. That’s incredible. You and your wife did a great job!

He's following along in his dad's footsteps of being a total nerd. Only thing is, he nerds in completely different ways from me. He's got a passion for geography and flags, and then history. He can name every country on a blank map, and can tell you every country's flag. He watches youtube videos on some history stuff and is super excited about his upcoming history class. All this helped greatly in planning the trip, trying to get him to visit as many of those countries he's looked at on the maps, see their flags flying proudly, and learning the history. Probably what all we visited will only end up being two pages in his history book (Ha! Like they use books anymore!) but it helps.

[gixxerjasen]

We went to bed after watching the Bastogne episode of Band of Brothers. It's interesting, after learning a few things, the things you take notice of that weren't obvious before, and impressive the level of detail that they put into these shows. When they were finally able to get the planes in to resupply the troops on the ground, they had used colored parachutes to designate what was being dropped. Red for ammunition, green for rations, white for medical supplies, etc. They had a number of these chutes on display at the 101st Airborne Museum and it was neat to see in the Band of Brothers episode that they used the various colored parachutes there as well, something I'd never noticed before.

The next morning, we headed north back into the Netherlands. This is the final phase of our trip and I'm pretty excited to spend some time exploring my birth country. First thing we did was go look at a field.



Yep, even today it looks like it'd be a good place to drop a bunch of paratroopers. This was the Eindhoven location for the drop for Operation market Garden.





After that, we headed down to the Netherlands American Cemetary where 8,288 American military are buried, and 1,722 MIA names are inscribed on the walls. This particular cemetery is special because of the local community. The local population decided to start a program where individual families would adopt an American soldier that was buried or MIA. They would take care of the individual grave site, they would learn as much as they can about the soldier, and would attempt to acquire photographs of their adopted soldier. On the Netherlands Liberation Day (May 5) they have special frames for that photo that they bring and place at the grave marker. This responsibility has been handed down through the generations and at last count there were over 300 entries on the waiting list of folks for adoption.

At the front are some maps of the action in the region, this resonated with my map nerd son.







The MIA soldiers are listed on these walls. One soldier's body was found in 1993, he was identified and buried in the cemetery amongst his fellow soldiers, at the request of his family, and his name was removed from the wall.















It was a nice time to reflect and to appreciate the impeccable care that they put into this cemetery. After this visit, we headed to our stay for the night in 's-Hertogenbosch known as "Den Bosch." This is a city that centers around a 15th-century painter, Hieronymous Bosch. There's artwork scattered all over the city based on his paintings and it makes for some interesting scavenger hunting. Sadly, we found when we got there, that the nightly projection show on the buildings around his artwork was no longer taking place which was a bummer.

This piece was outside our hotel.



A few around town that my son thought were funny.





The town itself is beautiful with wonderful architecture.



















We walked around the corner and came on this particular square.





I had a moment of deja vu. That tower in the center, the blue vendor in the background, I know this place! This was one of the youtube videos I watched and that blue vendor in the background sells fish, and in particular, a local delight known as "Kibbeling" which is a kind of fish and chips. This was one of the things I'd wanted to try while here and this was supposed to be one of the best places to get it. As we walked up though, the guy working there announced that he'd just shut off the fryer and no more hot food was available. Not being interested in pickled herring, we disappointedly moved on.

We picked a restaurant and Jakob had a burger with fries.



While I had a chicken pasta dish.



We finished off the evening at a gelato shop.

[bigjohnsd]

HOG Chapter mascot?

[gixxerjasen]

The next day we were headed for more historical stuff, but I spotted this along the way and had to hop off the highway and get a picture. I knew it was here thanks to Itchy Boots, but forgot about it. Anyway, I have a bunch of their gear so I had to stop and get the picture.



We stopped and saw two different windmills.





Loving the Dutch houses.



We went through the other two towns from Operation market Garden, Arnhem and Nijmegen. We additionally went to a WWII museum near Arnhem. This one wasn't as nicely displayed as the 101st museum, but they had a LOT of stuff. It was all very nicely organized, but they had huge cases of just ammunition, cases of cigarette boxes, cases of pistols, etc etc. There was so much stuff to look at, it was kind of overload. However, I can't share any of that stuff as they don't allow photography inside the museum. But they did let you take pictures outside, and that allows me to add some more motorcycle content.















We ran by the supermarket and instead of getting sandwiches we tried these pastries out. The top one has a sausage inside it and the bottom one is tomato and cheese, kind of an Italian pastrie.



We got to our hotel early. There was a nice park next door so we went for an afternoon walk to stretch our legs after sitting in the car for several days.





We grabbed dinner in the hotel restuarant. Jakob had another burger and I had french onion soup.

[gixxerjasen]

Woke up and looked at the weather forecast and had to switch up some plans. Hopped online and bought some tickets and off we went. Today's destination is Kinderdijk. One of the things the Dutch are known for round the world is their mastery of water. They have folks who are called in as consultants to water projects all over the globe. Many are aware that a large part of the country is below sea level held back by the giant dikes, of which we've already driven on one during our first day in the Netherlands. Today we visit a second project, and tomorrow will visit a third.

At Kinderkijk they used windmills not just for milling purposes, but they also equipped them with water wheels used to pump water up and out of the low area allowing them to drain a large portion of land for populating and farming.



The downside to this system was that it had to be manned and operated at the whim of the wind. This meant that they might have to run the windmills through the night and could be very inconvenient and inconsistent. Thanks to the invention of electric and diesel power, the function of the windmills was replaced with something more reliable.



This whole area is now a World Heritage Site and there's a lot to see and learn here including two museum windmills to tour, history movies and lots of trails and wildlife.

Quick stop to try out some giant wooden shoes. At the rate his feet are growing, he'll fit these by the time school starts.



We watched the movie about the area and then hopped in the above pictured boat that took us about halfway up the site where the first museum is located.



They've preserved the living quarters and allow you to climb all through it and see the internal mechanisms of the windmill.

The family that operated this windmill apparently had 13 children, all the boys huddled together in this bed. Big family doing tiny home living apparently.







This was the dining room/parents bedroom. Notice they get the room that's heated. Built above the parents bed area is an additional bed which served as the crib for the baby until they were old enough to move to sleep with their siblings.









Next one is looking down the shaft toward the mill.



This is the part that turns the water wheel outside.



This is the wheel used to turn the top part of the windmill to allow them to point it into the wind. We actually got to see them adjusting one of the active windmills while we were there.





There was a vendor outside selling poffertjes, which are mini pancakes sitting in melted butter covered with powdered sugar. So delicious.











The following windmill was the one they were adjusting and running out there, it also was a museum you could tour inside as well. This one looks different from the rest of them as it was the first one built on this site. The design changed after it was built.



Sadly it's not all original because apparently some idiot decided to set it on fire in 1997 and it had to be rebuilt.















When they let it go in the wind, it was really cranking and the wind across the blades was quite noisy.





When we got back to the gift shop area, there were some girls there selling all sorts of things including stroopwafels! Jakob chose a chocolate and oreo crusted one and promptly devoured it.



I liked this little waterside house and the boat they had.



After finishing up here, we made a run over to Scherpenzeel to take a photo of the house I was born in.



It was cool to finally see this place after 50 years and to show it to my son. Misision accomplished!

I promptly sent the photo to my parents, and we got on the road. Later I had the following conversation with my mom:

Mom: So cool! Our house was the one on the far left just outside of your photo.
Me: You told me it was number 64 which is just over my right shoulder.
Mom: Oh, I must have told you the wrong number, it's the one all the way to the left.

Sigh. So yea, I took the photo and showed my son the wrong house. Sigh. Wish she'd have just said "Cool! That's our old house!" and I'd have never known otherwise. Mission not accomplished.

We headed to a nearby town. I'd done some clothing inventory and we didn't have enough critical stuff (underwear and socks) to make it to our departure, so another visit to a laundromat was needed. This cool motorcycle shop was across the street.



Still loving the Dutch houses.



We grabbed a "NY Pizza" for dinner.



Followed by more Gelato.



Everywhere was decorated up and folks were all dressed for the big game that evening between NL and England to determine who played in the finals. Sadly NL would lose and then later England would lose to Spain after we got home.

[gixxerjasen]

The expected bad weather the previous day never came, but it was ok because the next day the weather was even better. I was really wanting to get out and do some bicycling and possibly try out my first ride on an e-bike. Turns out, our hotel had a nice rental fleet, so we picked up a pair for riding around today.



It's quite a different thing dealing with the car traffic and bike traffic over there. Took us some doing but we got the hang of it. Google did an ok job of navigating us but we found a lot of blocked/closed bicycle roads and had to do a bit of rerouting to see the things we wanted to see.

Today's destinations was the forts and defenses of the Dutch Waterline. Unfortunately, we found that some of the forts were closed off to the public and some appeared to need a paid ticket to get in. We did see this one, however.



Back to the Dutch waterworks. The Dutch Waterline was a defense mechanism. While they utilized their pumps and locks and dikes to keep the water out of the farmland, they retained the ability to flood that farmland in the event of an invasion. It was pretty clever as they could flood it to a certain depth, approximately knee deep. The water meant it would be incredibly difficult to traverse on foot or horse because of the spongy peat that forms the soil, however it would still be too shallow to get across by boat. Genius! Itchy Boots covered a bit of this in one of her Covid videos.

Here's my bike in front of a line of bikes. This particular style of bike was very popular there. Mountain bikes and road racing style bikes were extremely rare, I could probably count on one hand the total number of both that I saw. I will say though, on the brick and stone roads, I'd rather have my full suspension mountain bike instead.



Our bikes on one of the bicycle paths.



We decided to make the trek again. Mission accomplished and confirmed by mom. Sigh.



We then went to Amsterdam and checked into our hotel, then hit the trains to downtown. That was a bit crazy to figure out because depending on the trains you choose, you need two different types of tickets. I'd purchased a 3 day pass for us but it didn't get us on the faster trains, so I had to buy another ticket for that.

Amsterdam Centraal Station



Lots of bicycles. This is definitely a bicycle city.





I love video games and so does my son. We had to make a stop for a picture at Guerrilla Studios, where one of our favorite games was made.









We stopped at a traditional Dutch restuarant and got a seat by the window to the street.



We had an appetizer of Bitterballen, a meat stew that is balled, breadded and fried. We already ate two before I remembered to take a photo.



Then we had stamppot, which is a mashed potatoes mixed with some vegetable and topped with meat and gravy. Jakob got the Meatball with a side of bacon. It was arguably the better one and I was jealous.



Mine was the roast beef, still good but not as good as that meatball.



We did a little more walking around and then caught the trains back to the hotel.

[wheatonFJR]

Jasen, this is so awesome: time with son to remember, history, geography, food, visual arts, photography, mechanical engineering, architecture, and Time to see your birthplace. Just so good in many ways. Much respect for sharing this with your son. Practical too, for when yer as old as Rayzerman... your son can remind you of where you went. Lol

[gixxerjasen]

Last full day in Europe. This hotel had a reasonably priced breakfast bar of 11 Euro per person, which is far better than the 15-20 Euro we'd seen at other places. We'd expected to pay for parking at Utrecht but when I went to validate our parking ticket at the front desk, the lady gave me a free parking pass to get out, so I spent that money on our breakfast bar. It was standard breakfast food but I made sure to try what is supposed to be a traditional Dutch breakfast of chocolate sprinkles on buttered bread. It was ok.



Before we get too much into our day, I'd like to comment about the bicycles in Amsterdam. You can hear all you want about how bicycle centric the city has become, but until you see it for yourself, it's hard to comprehend.

Here's our hotel, the train station is to the right of it.



View of the train station from our window.



Now, lots of folks ride their bikes to the train station and park them there. So many in fact that there are quite a few bicycle parking lots. Here's two of them.





It's insane. One of the more interesting bikes we saw were these cargo bikes. People would haul all sorts of things, including hauling their kids around in them. I can't even imagine the crazy steering geometry and trying to ride one of these for the first time.





Anyway, we took the surface (cheaper already paid for) train back to downtown to see some other things today.



Besides bicycles, they have giant busses.



And tiny cars.



We were on our way here, to the Van Gogh museum.



However, we got there pretty early and it was raining pretty hard, thank goodness this place was across the street.



Eventually we went in and really enjoyed the exhibit. No photos were allowed inside but that was hardly being enforced and there were folks taking pictures of every single painting in there, so we grabbed a few ourselves.



This was pretty cool, they had two small paintings you could move around under a microscope to look at his brush strokes up close, and it was also projected onto the TV above. One is of a beach and when you looked you could see the flecks of sand that were blown into the paint while he was creating it.



When we got done, we visited the gift shop, then sat here for a bit contemplating if the rain was going to let up. I had a nice walking food tour for us this afternoon and the rain was putting a serious damper on the situation.



We just decided to accept getting rained on and headed out. Our first stop was Febo. These are little vending machine shops where you can get all sorts of interesting foods out of them. We skipped the burgers but tried everything else they had available.



This sausage was good, but was our least favorite of what we tried.



This was number 2 for us. It was a sort of mashed potatoes and meat rolled in batter and deep fried.



But in the end, how can you beat deep fried breaded cheese? So good!



Then we headed to a place to get some Kapsalon. It's french fries covered with schwarma, cheese, garlic sauce and salad. Kapsalon translates to "Hair Salon" which apparently this was created by a turkish guy running a hair salon and it caught on and is very popular in several Eurpoean countries. Jakob skipped the sauce and salad.



That was incredibly filling on top of our previous snacks, but we had two more stops to make.

Next up was Rudi's Stroopwafels. I'd seen several youtube videos, read up reviews and suggestions, and hands down, Rudi's was the place to go. It's a vendor in the middle of a street market.



When we got there, the hype was validated. There were several stroopwafel vendors standing around waiting on customers to come up. Rudi's had a line of about 30 people waiting, STANDING IN THE RAIN. We stood in the rain too.



They are literally pressing the waffels and then layering them with hot caramel and assembling them as you order them. So fresh, hot, gooey, and tasty.



Jakob got chocolate on his, between that and the caramel, he was a hot mess when he was done eating it.



Then it was time for more of those little mini pancakes, poffertjes. Lots of options for toppings here.





Jakob opted for Nutella and M&M's.



I got Nutella and bananas. Such a great combination.



Our last stop was to pick up some Delft Pottery stuff for my wife that she'd been asking for. This is the traditional white pottery with the blue painting on it.



By this point we were soaked to the bone and cold, so we hopped on the trains and headed back to the hotel for hot showers and dry clothing. Interesting architecture near one of the train stations we stopped at.



After our afternoon of gluttony, we skipped dinner and set about getting packed up for our early departure.

I made some critical miscalculations that kept me up that night figuring things out. I had originally scheduled to do an after-hours drop off of our rental car because our early 6AM flight was well before the rental shop opened. However, our issues and subsequent replacement car did not allow for after-hours drop off because a part of our agreement was that we return it to the airport rental agency, but we had to speak to an actual person to let them know the vehicle had to go back to the roadside assistance group. For this reason, we'd returned the car shortly after arriving in Amsterdam since we didn't need it for the rest of the trip as we were using the trains. My plan was to take the train to the airport, and I'd confirmed that there were lots of trains running early in the morning. My miscalculation was that I'd checked for Friday morning for trains and because that's a workday, there were lots. Saturday morning however, there were none, in fact the station next to the hotel was closed and the trains that were running went right through without stopping. Thankfully at the hour we got up, there were lots of folks returning from a night of clubbing so Uber was running in full force, so we were easily able to get a ride to the airport.

Quick flight to Paris where we got stamped out of the EU and then it was a long 10 hour flight back to DFW.



We had a great time but it's also good to be back home with family. I'm still readjusting to driving in the USA, it's hard to convert back.

[spklbuk]

We'll start off with this one shot.

Gracious, glad that his mamma is good looking!



Good things you've done Jasen...the trip and especially the young man.

[wheatonFJR]

Phew. I need a nap after that report. I feel like I should get 3 credit hours for that. Awesome sauce!

[gixxerjasen]

I need a nap after writing it!

But I am over 50, I hear naps become more common as you get older.

[Hppants]

What an amazing trip and experience with your son. Kudos to your wife and rest of your family for supporting the idea. We only live once, my friend, and then we die. You are doing it right.

Friggin awesome, man.