A Casual Monday Bus Tour Through North Holland
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
Although I was now officially at the Amsterdam pre-convention of the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society, the Sons of the Desert, nothing we had planned for the day had anything to do with Laurel and Hardy, and we had yet to step foot into Amsterdam. Our Avifauna Hotel was actually in Alphen aan den Rijn, located in South Holland in the Netherlands. On Monday, July 7, 2008, we would begin our bus trip at our hotel and venture into Northern Holland for the day. Read the rest of this entry »
It was all Bob’s fault that I spent over $100 at CD Connection in Huber Heights on Friday, July 25, 2008. Had his flight arrived on time, I would never have ended up there while waiting, and I never would have purchased the entire run of Scrubs on DVD. But that’s all water under the bridge now. As it was, his American Airlines flight that was scheduled to arrive at 5:23pm that afternoon, didn’t actually get in until around 7:30. The reason for his arrival: he and I were about to embark on the granddaddy of all “website-driven re-visits of places I’ve already been but have to see again because I was too stupid to take photos of myself by the landmarks when I was there the first time” tours. 
The first thing that I thought about when I popped out of bed at 6am was that I wasn’t at home. The second thing was that…if I were at home, it would have been midnight. So I scraped myself out of bed, grabbed a shower, and prepared for the busy day ahead. The Mercure Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany did not have breakfast waiting for us, but it would be the last place in which we stayed that didn’t have a huge European-style buffet breakfast until our final two days in Europe. I stopped off at the lobby computer briefly on the way out and then headed to our car. 
One of the best and most memorable vacations that I ever took came during the Summer of 1977. As an impressionable lad of five, I’m quite convinced that it was this trip that solidified my love of Florida, Disney World, and vacations in general. Although I can’t be 100%certain of the dates of this trip, two photos from it were given by my parents to my Grandma Range. She dated the back of each photo as June 6, 1977. Although each photo was likely taken on a different day of the trip (one was at Disney and the other was out to eat at the Kapok Tree with Ira and Mildred), I have no reason to doubt that this was a valid date during the trip. 
As I walked the ramp from the airplane to customs on the morning of Saturday, July 5, 2008, the first thought that entered my mind was that Germany must be a dunghole. The whole area had been ripped apart for construction and it looked like I had just entered a third-world country. As it happens, this was the only area of the country that made me feel this way. Of the eight European countries I visited, Germany was the nicest of all. Ahead of me were two weeks of traveling via planes, trains, and automobiles (as well as boats, taxis, buses, and subways) throughout the European continent. I had finally popped the pond after 36 years of remaining on the North American continent.