Adventures in Euroland: Day 11

Amsterdam - better in the morning? Not by much...
I think due to our sheer amout of disappointment with our initial impression of Amsterdam yesterday Nick and I did not bother leaving the hotel until about noon today.

Amsterdam does not look much better in the sunlight. We meandered around trying to decide which museum to check out. I think our indecisiveness stemmed from being worried about having such another negative experience. We stumbled upon a canal tour, which we thought would be pretty safe, so we decided to take that.

It wasn't too bad. It was about an hour, and the boat was pretty cool. It was long and flat and had a glass roof on it so you could see all the buildings. Amsterdam is all built on wood planks and the city is slowly sinking, like Venice. The buildings lean all different directions in some places, I will have to add pictures later.

To be honest, I spent most of the tour watching a little kid on the boat terrorize the people he was with. Some super grungey lookig guy and his wife/girlfriend/mistress. He was wearing a wedding ring and she was definitely not. The kid was throwing his soda can all over and at one point bit the lady's finger. She screamed really loud and then sat in her seat and cried. The kid didn't even get scolded. The guy was like, "are you gonna say you are sorry?" and the kid laughed and spit out a chunk of her fake nail. GROSS.

After that Nick and I saw the flower market, which was really cool actually. It was like three or four blocks of flower venders. They had all kinds of plants, every type you can think of. I saw lots of cacti and thought of dad. There were sooo many different kinds I think he would have wanted to buy them all. I also saw Bonsai trees and tulips and all kinds flowers, some orchids, and venus fly traps, lots of bulbs for every type of flower, all sorts of starter kits, including a grow your own cannabis kit.

We had lunch, the food here is not as good as Germany. Not by any stretch.

We also walked around and found a local market with lots of street vendors. Some of the stuff they were selling was really cool. I liked one stall in particular which sold some really neat clothing. They had the coolest hoodies and jackets I have ever seen in my LIFE. If I had not already gotten my Swatch I would have bought a jacket hands down. But I did get their website for future purposes. In case anyone is interested... here are the jackets we saw. I thought they were AMAZING. I really liked the ones by Gado Gado. SUCH cool clothing.

We headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit, since we walked all over the place. It was about 4, so we'd been walking for about 4 hours or so, minus half an hour for lunch.

One thing to note is that Amsterdam is FULL of bikes. I'm positive bikes outnumber cars at least three to one. So people are used to getting around by bike, on foot, or on the bus/trolly. So things are very crowded as I mentioned in my last post. Plus you have to watch out for tons of bicyclers. Dad, you would HATE it here just because of THAT alone.

Ladies of the night...
Anyway, after a few hours of down time we headed back out in search of food. Nick looked up this asian place that was supposed to be really good. So we headed in that direction. When we stopped to look at a map for directions, the inevitable happened: we realized our restaurant was precariously close to the Red Light district.

We kinda looked at each other... and back at the map, then back at each other.

Morbid curiosity won over.

The decision was made.

The place we wanted to eat had an hour wait so we put our name in for a table and headed one block to the north. As soon as we set foot in the next street over we were greeted with red lights and neon in the shape of busty women.

I promptly ran away.

I stood in the little alley between main streets and giggled like an idiot for a while. I told Nick maybe we should just cross the street, and not walk along the red light district, just to be safe. So we could kind of test the water, as it were. He agreed. So we bravely ventured out from our alley into the Red Light District. And right on through to the other side.

It wasn't that bad. We could see lots of sex toy shops all along the streets, neon sigs of naked women, bars, and LOTS of red lights. The red light district is literally FULL of red lights. Even the street lamps have red bulbs in them.

We went across and over to the next street, which was relatively safe. We went down another block and decided to cross back over through the red light district to the street our restaurant was on. Upon doing so we saw a sex theatre and in the alley there are lots of windows with real live girls standing in them in their lingerie solicing to people. Almost all of them were smoking.

I didn't really see a lot. I was staring with great intensity at the back of the person-ahead-of-me's back. So most of what I saw I saw out of the corner of my eyes. Don't judge me dear reader, I was curious, but intensely freaked out. I wanted to go back again, just for the sake of this blog, but I couldn't do it. Dad, please don't be too disappointed in me, I went to the red light district, I just can't tell you much about it. :p

Nick and I opted to wander in another direction instead, the whole time Nick was teasing me about getting me a lap dance, you know, for the sake of my blog. Jerk. To be fair, I did ask him if he thought they took women clients as well as men, and he said we could go back and ask one. To which of course I freaked out. It's my own fault really. I'm too easy to pick on. : /

ANYWAY. He was just being silly, because we were both sort of embarassed about the whole thing and I think we both respond to awkwardness with humor. It really isn't too different from Vegas I suppose, except they are probably more open about it here.

On a slightly unrelated but just as humorous note, there is a GIANT church right at the end of the red light district. Somehow, neither Nick nor I were surprised by this fact.

That sums it up.
The food was terrible, sadly, and we returned to the hotel feeling more or less bemused but ready to go home. I'm not sure what we are going to do tomorrow but I can honestly say I am ready to come back to the states. I do not care for Amsterdam much although it has been an intersting experience to say the least.

Who knows what we'll end up doing tomorrow, but the day after I will fly home, so that is great news to me. I flew coach on the way to Europe and I am just going to check into upgrading to first class for the flight home. I expect it to be several thousand dollars or more points than I have to upgrade but I want to at least ask. Coach for 8 hours blows, but at least I will have a window seat this time.



P.S. I have also decided to write the Ballad of Tiffani Visits the Red Light District, it would be similar to Monty Python's song about Brave Sir Robin Bravely Running away. Some possible lines include:

"When Naked reared its ugly, tiffani bravely turned her tail and fled,
Yes Tiffani turned about and gallantly she chickened out."

http://tiffanitravelblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/adventures-in-euroland-ballad-of.html

Adventures in Euroland, Day 3

Morning adventures:
Today was pretty laid back. Aside from the fact I finally realized how incredibly dehydrated I was and how sick I felt this morning. I was very much awake and feeling pretty terrible about 4:45am. I hung out in bed till it was time for breakfast. Got up, had some breakfast. It was my first Breakfast in Europe. They had cereal and cold cuts at the buffet. I didn't realize this, but I guess it is fairly common to have sandwiches for breakfast over here. Hmm. Who knew? I opted for cereal. It was a really tasty oat and whole grain cereal with lots of berries and fruit in it. DELICIOUS.

Bad Bentheim is somewhere about 52 or 53 degrees above the equator. To give a point of reference; Boulder, CO is about 42 degrees above the equator and Tulsa, OK is somewhere in the upper 30s I think. So the sun doesn't come up here until sometime after 8am this time of year. We're also not TOO far from the ocean so it has been very damp and rainy. The sun came out for a while this afternoon, but is has rained/misted off and on all day every day since I got here. Guess that helps expain how incredibly green everything is.

There is a small cafe near by. Nick usually buys his lunch there in the morning and takes it with him to work. I went with him and got several bottles of water. (Which, the only not carbonated water they had were bottles of apple flavored water. What is with these people? What is wrong with just plain water?! Although, admittedly, the apple flavored water isn't too bad once you get used to it.) The lady looked at me like I was nut, but I'd had very little to drink in the last three days or so and I was feeling pretty awful. So pardon me for hoarding some water, but I am determined not to feel that bad again on this trip. I went back to the room and cat napped a bit till the sun came up.

I headed out about 8:30 or and walked around town for quite a while. It was very chilly, but not unbearably so. It turns out the castle is closed on Fridays this time of year, so I headed out and about in a 5 or 6 block radius from the hotel. Everything just feels OLD here. It's really neat. The walls are covered with moss and ivy, there are narrow little alleys hiding everywhere. It's just cool. This place exudes what I picture the quinessential little European village to be. It's also full of old people.

I walked around the outside of the castle and got some pictures. Here is a really cool Lion statue outside the castle.

ROAR!

Backside of the castle.

Looking up at the castle from the street level.

Another view from the street.

Castle gardens, all the brown areas are full of rose bushes, but they are not in bloom in January. :(

Castle chapel belfry.

Near-by church. You can hear the bells ringing all the time. The ring for half an hour Sunday from 11:30 to 12. It is really neat to hear them throughout the day.

 It is sacrilegious to let your dog poop on church property. >: O

Some sheep hanging out on the castle grounds. They baa-ed at me a lot.









I didn't make it out to the windmill. I think that is going to be a pretty far walk and I am having trouble matching street names to the map as the streets are not well marked here.

I also had a little trouble with feeling car sick on the train, (probably due to lack of sleep, food, and water) But just to be on the safe side I took my handy phrase book that my brother got me for Christmas and set off to communicate with the locals like a pro.

Ok, so this ended up being mostly me pointing to the word "Motion Sickness" in German in my phrase book and asking "Das Bitte?" But either way everyone I 'spoke' to was very nice and I got my medication. :D I figured better safe than sorry since it will be a several hour train ride to Berlin on Tuesday.

Having wandered around for several hours I headed back to the hotel to warm up for a bit, It was probably 10:30 or so. I surfed the web, responded to e-mails, etc and promptly fell asleep about the time I was thinking I should get some lunch. (Maybe 1pm?)

I woke up about 4:00 and hung out till Nick got back from work.

Best Dinner EVER:
This past weekend in Nashville Nick's best friend Dustin told me that dining is really a different experience in Europe. He described it as, you go in and sit down and EVENTUALLY someone comes over to get your drink order. Then you wait and EVENTUALLY they come back with your drinks. And you wait some more. And then after a while they come back and take your order. And then you wait, and you wait, and you wait and then you get your food. Then, after you are done eating and you sit for a long time, eventually they bring your check back to you.

Boy was he right. Up till tonight we had only eaten in the buffet. Eating out is pretty much exactly as Dustin described it. A whole LOT of wainting. It does kind of smack you in the face with just how face paced and impatient our culture is.

HOWEVER, once we finally got our food, OH MY GOD. We ate at a little Italian cafe a few blocks away. The tortellini I had would easily put Olive Garden, Macarroni Grill, and I'm sure any other Italian place in the states to shame. IT WAS SO GOOD. Words cannot even express the deliciousness of dinner. It wasn't a very big serving by American standards, but I ate it all and I felt very satisfied at the end. Did I mention how freaking delicious it was???

Anyway, that about sums up my day. Pretty un-eventful. I am looking forward to touring the castle tomorrow. It doesn't open till 10, but I a looking forward to spending quite a bit of time there. Night All.