Day 15. 1638km, 8th of Aug.

Tried to get up early today, wanted to make sure I got some time in Arnhem before I left for Amsterdam. The first place I visited on my way into town was the airborne cemetery. To get there I cycled through I forest. I passed a man walking his dog and asked him to take a picture of me. We started talking and it turned out that he also rode a Brompton. I asked him about the woods, and he told me that we where standing on the same grounds the fighting during Operation Market Garden took place, that they still find bits and pieces of equipment in the area that remind them of what happened here not so long ago. We walked to a tree where a piece of artillery had left its scar and continued towards the cemetery.

I was alone when I enter the cementery except for a gardener tending some hedges. It was extremely well kept, the man I met earlier had told me that pupils in the schools of Arnhem tend the graves as part of their history lessons, in that way, wha thappened there would never be forgotten.

I walked around and after some 15 minuted another man had entered the grounds. He looked old, but not old enough to have been involved in the fighting. So not a WW2 vet. After some time our paths crossed and he asked me about my bike which I had left outside the gate. We talked for a bit and he asked me how come I had visited the cementery. He said that there're few places like this, that he had visited Chernobyl, Auschwitz, Treblinka and many other terrible places, "there is something very special and sad about a military cementery and to see your fellow soldiers in one."

After the cementery I left for the airborne museum, it's located in an old hotel that served as headquarters during the fighting. They had an interactive airborne experience where you walked through different sceneries, from jumping out of an airplane to reaching the town in the middle of the night. I spent at least 2 hours there and later cycled down to the famous bridge portrayed in so many movies. It was destroyed during the war but has now been rebuilt as the John Froster Bridge.

The ride from Arnhem to the outskirts of Amsterdam was very pleasant, good temperature and good roads. The sun was setting during my last hour of cycling and I managed to stay close to the water for a couple of hours. The sights in the Netherlands have been nothing short of breathtaking and I'd like to return and do some more touring around here soon.

The only negative thing with so much water around is that it attracts a lot of mosquitos, I had to wipe a lot of them off my glasses every now and then, they would also get stuck in my beard and fly into my mouth and nose.