Cruising to Arnham

Huzzah.. At last we are cruising on the river. Mostly overnight to reach Arnham by 9am for our scheduled tours. Arnham is where Joan stayed most of the time she was an exchange student. We shall take two tours, one of the Palais de Loo and grounds and the other to a WWII museum commemerating the battle of Arnham that destroyed much of its antiquity and was a terrible loss for the British paratroopers. The story was made into a movie called A Bridge Too Far by Sir Richard Attenburough.

What Jolly fun...... A bus.

The bridge you see just ahead of the ship is the bridge that was the source for the battle. The English took it, but due to some poor planing, their supplies ended up behid the German lines and the had to abandon it to the advancing Panzer division as they ran out of munitions. The Germans later destroyed it when they finally retreated towards the end of the war. The failure to take the bridge was a contributing reason for the Battle of the Buldge in Belgium.

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the 1,100 pictures I had of Amsterdam, of our meetup with Cindy, the trip to Hoorn, and yes, all my pictures of Arnham are gone when the chip was lost after blogging. I was able to post pics from Hoorn as I had already downloaded some onto my ipad, but Arnham will have to exist only in our minds. 

The Palais de Loo is like a Dutch version of Versailles only on a much smaller scall. It is currently undergoing rennovation of the gardens which will be spectacular once grown........ And in the spring when it is not so bitter cold with a strong North wind. They grow fruit trees against the walls and train/trim the branches such that they form a vine between trees that become horizontal rows and are only about 3 feet thick. Once they bear fruit, this design makes for easy access and pickings for the royal court.

The Gardens were nice and very Baroque and the Palace was laid out as one would expect. Joan purchased the optional listening device that explained may of the various rooms attributes while I shot photos. The first king of Holland, William I also known as William of Orange, was actually Prussian. 

It got cloudy and then rainy so we headed back on the bus around Arnham for lunch on the boat.

After lunch we went to memorial for the allied effort to free the Nederlands by capturing the bridge at Arnham. The American and Canadien forces achieved their objectives, dut due to some poor planning efforts and mishaps of execution, the British successfully took the bridge but couldn't hold it. The Germans recaptured the entire area and provided Panzar reinforcement thus ending the ally front in the north forcing the front to push through Belgium.

Back to the boat where we cruise tonight for Kinderdijk and Windmills.