Nijmegen; Sunday, 01 May, 2016

Given I’d eaten quite a bit not that long before bed the previous evening I had a really good night’s sleep, though some pretty weird dreams – I’m blaming the bacon infused pancakes for that. I headed down to breakfast actually feeling quite hungry which I wasn’t expecting so I had another large meal before heading out for the day.

I wandered through town to the Valkhof museum and spent a very long time looking round it’s exhibits including the spectacular collection of Roman remains that help cement Nijmegen’s claim to be The Netherlands oldest City and the large collection of Pop Art in the basement (it’s that kind of museum)

There aren’t very many attractions in Nijmegen and the only other museum – the bicycle museum – is open on a Monday so I was saving that back for tomorrow. Having exhausted my list of places to visit in town for the day I headed back towards the station and on my way passed a bus stop showing a bus into the neighbouring city of Arnhem due in a couple of minutes’ time, so I decided to go for a bus ride through the Gelderland countryside.

The other reason for visiting Arnhem is that it is the twin city of my home town Croydon so I was interested to see what the place looked like. To be honest, I wasn’t particularly surprised that it was twinned with Croydon the only difference being the destruction of Arnhem’s town centre was an act of war, rather than the act of counsellors.

Having taken in most of Arnhem I headed over to the station to catch the train back into Nijmegen and then onto the city of Venlo to have a look round there.

Venlo had even less to commend it than Arnhem, but it did have a couple of decent restaurants so I had dinner in the centre of town before catching the bus back up the opposite side of the river from the train watching the sun slowly start to set as we finally approached Nijmegen.

I had a quick drink in the hotel bar before turning in for the evening.