Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.Photographers, artists, poets: show us TRAVELS.

Well, as you may have picked up from my recent ‘movie’ posts, I have been doing a spot of travelling and spent a very nice week in Germany at the end of last month…

I didn’t take any pictures at all of the trip north; I didn’t even stop to take any of the storm damage that was obvious all along the road north from Raurimu to Auckland – this would have been interesting to contrast with the similar storm that swept western Europe the week we were there (and, nope, didn’t take any photos of that either!!) – so my first photo is the mandatory one I always (usually – none from Dubai because my view was only of a rather bland concrete wall) take of the view from my hotel room…this being in Kleve…

…and another from the hotel stairway looking back the other way…the Rilano-Kleve is very close (five minute walk) to the old centre of town (a five minute drive to the new centre) which has some great places to eat…

The Wednesday night one of our team who used to live in Germany arranged for us to come here in Uedem for dinner with some of his friends…very nice to meet Jurgen and Petra and thanks for a great night out…

…polishing off the night with a bottle of Killepitsch herb liqueur…I had intended to bring a bottle home but out-clevered myself by checking my bag all the way through to Auckland so that I was unable to stash any post-checkin duty-free in it during our brief stopover in Dubai…Prior to heading home we had a chance for a very quick look around the area…this is the bridge at Nijmegen, just across the border in The Netherlands (lesson learned to include the ‘The’ to find The Netherlands in the GPS!). This is the bridge seen in the famous scene from A Bridge Too Far where a horrified Hardy Kruger watches Allied tanks advance across the bridge as he tries to destroy it. It is also where Robert Redford leads a daylight crossing of the river in collapsible boats…

I didn’t do any research before we visited Nijmegen. If I had, I would have known that the actual bunker from which the Germans tried to destroy the bridge was only just along the road from where we stopped (the T intersection above the ‘tec’ in battledetective.com below)…

From Nijmegen, it was only a short drive – an amazingly short drive when you consider the difficulty that the Allies experienced trying to advance along this highway to relieve the airborne forces there – to Arnhem and the ‘bridge too far’, now named the John Frost Bridge after the CO of the parachute battalion that held one end of the bridge for a week against much more powerful German forces…

There is a small museum by the bridge which was closed and a small memorial park with some display plaques and displays…

…one of which was this twisted propeller blade. There was no marking or label with it but we assumed that it is from one of the many Allied aircraft shot down over Arnhem as the Allies tried to sustain the airborne forces by air…

An hour or so later we arrived in Amsterdam and experienced a modern car park building where there are no ramps, just an elevator that services all levels. Probably a good thing that we had such a small car as the elevator is quite tight…

I can’t say that I liked Amsterdam that much…I’d probably revisit it out of novelty value but for the most part it was quite dirty and crowded…

The obligatory stroll along the Red Light District…pretty boring really…

…some interesting old architecture…

…and a novel take on providing extra cycle parking in the centre of the city…

Yes…you can do this legally on some roads…more impressively, you can do it in a Volvo diesel shoe box on wheels…

Crossing the Rhine into Dusseldorf…

No surprises that I got into trouble in this shop…and could have got into a lot more if I had a bigger suitcase…

I quite liked Dusseldorf in the short time we had to have a look around before heading over the the airport…it reminded me very much of pre-quake Christchurch with many old buildings (most reconstructed after the war) and walks along the waterways…if I come back this way, I’d like to spend a bit more time here to have a decent look around…

I felt that I had to take at least one photo in Dubai…this is from our hotel car park back towards the airport…

Flying south from Dubai over the desert – modeller’s note: the sand colour applied by the RAF to its Gulf War aircraft would have blended well into this endless monotone…

Tankers parked up in the Gulf…

…home again…the arrivals hall at Auckland Airport…just a four hour drive from here to home sweet home…

via Daily Prompt: Come Fly with Me | The Daily Post.