Saturday, June 4, 2022
On my mother’s to-do list in Amsterdam was the Dutch Resistance Museum. We decided to eat lunch right next door before heading in. After a hearty meal of Bitterballen and Dutch spareribs, we walked next door only to find out that the Resistance Museum was closed due to construction. Instead, we walked half a mile to the Luther Museum Amsterdam. The museum was quite fascinating. It told the story of the rise of Lutheranism in the Netherlands and eventually its demise due to the immoralities of Amsterdam and Holland as a whole (though they don’t admit that).
Being a mighty proud 12.5% Dutch, mom was eager to find some authentic Delftware. We decided to shop around the Central district to find some. After finding success doing that, we went to some cheese shops. There seems to be a cheese shop on every block in Amsterdam, and the best part is that they give out samples of every wheel! I nearly had to skip dinner because I had so many samples.
Next door to one of the cheese shops was a casino. To our disappointment, the Casino had no tables and, therefore, no poker chips to collect. I asked the attendant where we could find a casino that had tables. He directed us (quite sassily) to the Holland Casino. I asked him if we’d need to pay to get into the Casino. He looked at me in disgust and said, “Why you need to pay for casino?” and turned away.
We took the tram over to the Holland Casino, and guess what? It costs money. Luckily, the attendant dad spoke to was quite pleasant, and she allowed us to enter the Casino for free after Dad told her we simply wanted to collect a few poker chips. After getting our poker chips, we ate dinner at the outdoor restaurant attached to the Casino. I ate roasted duck with an Aperol Spritz to wash it down. After dinner, we made our way back to the hotel and called in early for bed in preparation for our twelve-hour car journey to Normandy the following day.
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Dad and I woke up early to pick up our rental car from Sixt. We got to Sixt at 10 AM for our pickup. To our disappointment, we waited 45 minutes in line to find out that they didn’t have a car for us. Noticing that this man was the only worker at Sixt that day and that he had grown frustrated with the previous customers scolding and talking down to him, and also observing that he putts from the rough, I gave him my best tone of voice, humor, and compliments; and within minutes, voila, we were driving an Audi through the narrow streets of Amsterdam on our way to pick up Brooke and my mom from the hotel.
When we got into the car park at the hotel, I noticed that the right rear tire was shockingly low on air. We drove to the nearest gas station and filled the tire with air (this cost us 2 Euros). After filling the tire, we got some McDonald’s right across the street. When we’d finished eating our hearty lunch, we came back out to find that the tire had lost some air yet again. I got down on the ground and put my ear next to the tire. I could hear a faint hissing sound. After a few minutes, I found the leak in the tire. I ran back over to the gas station, bought some glue, sprinted back to our Audi, and put a fair amount of the glue into the hole I had discovered. Not knowing how to read Dutch and not being clever enough to realize I had bought guerrilla glue, I stuck my thumb to the tire of the Audi to plug the hole. I’m afraid to say I paid for that mistake with my thumbprint. On the bright side, it will be difficult for any foreign agencies to convict me of any wrongdoings for the time being.
The skin of my thumb appeared to plug the hole momentarily, so we began our journey. We first drove to The Hague, where we saw the World Forum, where Putin will go if he’s tried for War Crimes. After The Hague, we drove thirty more minutes into Delft, a quaint Dutch town pinched between The Hague and Rotterdam, home of the famous blue pottery. Noticing our tire was flattening again, we found a wayside shortly before the Belgian border, paid two more Euros to fill it up, and applied another generous amount of super glue to the puncture.
Driving through Antwerp and Ghent, we were through Belgium within 90 minutes and into France. Once in France, we drove from Lille to Arras to Amiens to Rouen to Caen and finally to our home for the next two nights, the Hotel Eisenhower in Port-en-Bessin-Huppain, at exactly Midnight.
Along the way, we stopped for McDonald’s a bit West of Amiens. The McDonald’s was jam-packed with close to eighty people, which was most surprising, since we were in, what seemed to be, the middle of nowhere. Being so far North in France, not a single person in the restaurant spoke English, which became quite problematic when our American Express card wasn’t working on their machine.
We made routine stops every hour in order to check our tire pressure and apply more super glue to the hole in the tire. It wasn’t until the final stop that we found out that the car did not have a spare tire in the trunk, but rather, a portable tire inflator. This inflator ended up proving most useful.
Monday, June 6, 2022
Few people can say that they were at the Normandy American Cemetery on June 6, the Anniversary of D-Day. I am fortunate enough to be one of those people.
Today was a day I will cherish for the rest of my life. Brooke and I stood front row at the Normandy American Cemetery’s 78th Anniversary of the D-Day commemoration ceremony.
We sang proudly when the band played the Star-Spangled Banner, and the flag rose to its finial as three C-130J Super Hercules from Ramstein Air Force Base roared by only a couple hundred feet above our heads.
Shortly after the National Anthem, General Mark Milley, United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke for several minutes, thanking the greatest generation of Americans for the sacrifices they made in our stead.
Before the commemoration ceremony concluded, everyone rose and directed their attention at the trumpeter as he played taps. I’ve got goosebumps just thinking of it again.
Once the ceremony had concluded, Dad, Brooke, and I ran into a 98-year-old WW2 veteran from Wisconsin Rapids. We spoke for a few minutes. Being an avid wrestling fan, I mentioned how dominating Wisconsin Rapids had once been in the sport. Not to my surprise, the veteran was a wrestling fan himself!
Immediately after speaking with the veteran, we talked to General Mark A. Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the principal military advisor to the President, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Council. My dad told him about how his grandfather served in France during WWI. General Milley gave my dad a medallion and thanked him for his grandfather’s service.
Later that day, after lunch, while the girls were taking a nap, dad and I went down to Omaha Beach, where I could take some pictures with my DJI Mavic 3 Cine. We capped off the night with dinner and crêpes.
