Boekel, Netherlands - July 19-21

Our first stop in Boekel was to meet another cousin named Jo and her husband Willie. They ended up giving us an awesome umbrella that we carry around with us religiously, as well as some bottle openers that I am supposed to give to my father - woot!

After the short visit, we were passed along to another family - this time the house we were going to be staying at - Frans and Ria's.... more cousins, of course.

We were re-introduced to Ria's son, Roel - the last time I saw him was in 1994, so it's been awhile. There was a fair in the town over, so it would be a good opportunity to get out there and all that jazz. We met up with his brother, Niels, at the fair.... where we stayed for a couple of hours on display to the Dutch boys (charming, I know). When were sick of being surrounded and bombarded, we made our way through the midway and went on the giant swing and then headed home to sleep.

We slept in until late the next day and spent a relaxing time with Ria. My grandpa's sister (Dina) and another of my mother's cousins came by for a visit. We ended up driving Dina back to her nursing home for lunch (also where Ria works) and we got a small tour of the facility. During the tour, we were introduced to another of my grandfather's sisters, Iet - yes, basically everyone in the south of the Netherlands is related to me somehow.

We obviously visited some more relatives throughout the day and kind of just hung around the village. We made some plans for the evening with the boys - we would all gather at the bowling alley for a night out with some more cousins (no bowling was involved, just 43 beers - gotta love the Van den Broek family). We said our goodbyes at the end of the night, as everyone hopped on their bicycles and headed home (it's the Netherlands, it's just what they do).

On Tuesday, we drove through the countryside (well I guess all of the Netherlands is basically countryside), to the city of Nijmegen where a huge walk had started earlier that morning at 5am. That's literally all it was - 40,000 people walking 50km each day for 4 days to earn a medal.... hmmm.

We got back to Boekel early in the evening where we prepared our bags to head out to Den Hagg to meet up with Angelique again.

Unfortunately for us, the train tracks were struck by lightning so it took us an extra hour and a half to get there - oh well.