First let me tell you that I’m still unable to pronounce this town’s name correctly. The morning was spent sailing (thru the lock again), headed toward Nijmegen. We arrived early under the helm of my handsome captain. This was my stupid day. Every trip has a stupid day where you make stupid decisions. So yeah, get ready, one is coming. The morning started with me breaking my belt. Do no judge me! It was not from overeating (but yes, I had been eating and drinking more than usual). The belt was cheap and the leather simply split where I typically notched the belt. Now the problem with this is that my jeans really don’t fit well (i.e., stay in place) unless I’m wearing a belt. So I knew I was going to have get a souvenir here.
Nijmegen is a bigger town – it has name brand department stores. It also happens to be one of the oldest towns in The Netherlands, dating back to Roman days. And it happens to be exceptionally close to Germany. That means the tour included several stories from World War 2. The most unfortunate one being that the US bombed the town and killed 800 civilians due to inaccurate bombing.
The town, while historic in some areas, chose to rebuild in a more modern style, which means there aren’t a lot of great pictures to take. The history is fascinating. The town is famous for hosting the 4 day march every July, which we just missed. If you’re interested in that, here’s some info. The highlight of the trip was buying a belt at TK Maxx. So the stupid thing that I did. We were on the tour of the town and found we couldn’t go into the main church because a funeral was taking place. The guide was going to walk the group back to the boat…and I decided to stay in town (to hopefully find a belt)….without really knowing how to get back to the boat.
Having made my purchase, I thought to myself “this is nuts”. Rather than grabbing a coffee and enjoying the town, I pretty much panicked. I walked back to where I left the guide by the church. I then went down the road that I saw them go down and prayed that I would stumble upon the boat. Now I know I could have turned on my phone’s data roaming plan and probably used google maps or apple maps or maybe even citymapper to find my way back. But that is $10 per day roaming charge! That was going to be my last option.
Luckily the dock was maybe a minute down the road, so my panic was unwarranted. Still…I got on the boat and didn’t leave. No picture of the TK Maxx, sorry.