Canals, spirits & chocolate (NSFC)

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Amsterdam!

It's not what you think. OK it is a little bit. OK a lot, sorry. Amsterdamis a wonderful place, and I can neither condone nor condemn the activities of anyone who sets foot in this great city. We were there for a little under a week. At first, we stayed in a brand new hostel in the south of the city called the Generator. This is another chain hostel that was almost more hotel than hostel. No kitchen, which is automatically a strike against them as far as we are concerned, but it made up for it in the quality of the beds and the jovial atmosphere. The hostel was an old converted university building, complete with a lecture amphitheater and a "library" that had about ten books. It was quiet like a library, though, and we took advantage in order to watch some stuff we had been meaning to catch up on *COUGH* Game of Thrones *COUGH*. The front door exited into a typical Netherlands park, full of aerobics groups, laughing kids and people doing a healthy amount of smoking. Both kinds. It seemed like it was the kind of park you didn't necessarily want to be in after midnight. Maybe not, though. The Hollanders are a pretty peaceful lot, as far as I can tell. We walked around the city the first day before realizing that we had both been here before and felt almost no need to see anything specific. Every day we were in Holland, it was absolutely gorgeous weather, so we didn't mind doing some wandering by the canals. We walked through the red light district in the evening and laughed at all the gawking tourists.

After two days, the price of a bed at the Generator skyrocketed, so we moved to another Hostel called StayOkay for a day. It was okay. There was a pee stain on my comforter. At least I think it was pee -- I wasn't about to smell it. It was quickly enshrouded in a duvet cover. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. There are things you just deal with sometimes. The breakfast was typical for Europe (slices of ham, cheese, an egg and bread with Orange Juice and coffee), and also free, which is for me.

We took a trip out to Holland's famous windmills one day, and it was somewhat entertaining. Everything was too expensive, though. There were no tulips, despite it being the end of season for such things. We were slightly disappointed. We did see some cops interrogating some suspected thief lady, though, which was weird.

We then booked two nights at a new place, just outside of town. The Lucky Lake Hostel. In fact it wasn't really in Amsterdam at all. After an hour or so on the local buses, it turns into the countryside, almost. It was closer to a little town called Abcoude.

This place was utterly fantastic. The best hostel we have yet to encounter. I believe the feeling in Rindi was mutual. The rooms were little caravans (read: little camper trailers) painted all different pastel colors surrounding a central common area with a fantastic kitchen (with a grill!) and a small little structure they referred to as the "smoking room" for obvious reasons. You could rent kayaks and paddle boards for the nearby lake for a measly three euros an hour, and they had bicycles to rent to ride into the village of Abcoude to go to the farmers market or the grocery store. We both did the former in a two-person kayak and after some initial bickering and turning in circles, we got a rhythm down. I played the Delivery Dude (hah!) and rented a bike one of the days to ride into town to pick up groceries and wine. Rindles actually smoked a little ganja (as I'm sure all of you who know her will be amused to learn). There were this pair of semi-domesticated ducks (don't feed them, asshole!) that I dubbed "duckcrew" that wandered around every day were were there, thick as thieves. And a cat named David. We loved this little place. If you ever find yourself in or around Holland, stay here. It's the best. It's a little out of the way, but very worth it. Describing just how relaxing this place was after 40-something cities is an exercise in futility.

Unfortunately, we had to leave. We got on a train back into Amsterdam, then another one headed south for Brussels.

Brussles, Belgium

We still had two days on our Eurail pass when leaving the Netherlands, but didn't want to go directly to Paris, our point of egress from mainland Europe. As we had an extra Eurail pass day, we decided to go to Brussels to burn a couple days. It was recently in the news for the actions of some sad, cowardly motherfuckers that killed some people. If you hadn't heard about this incident and were in the city, you would never know. Unless you set foot in the square in front of the Bourse de Bruxelles where there is a shrine to the fallen. The people here have carried on as normal, like nothing untoward ever happened. In fact the second day we were there, they were throwing a massive LGBT pride parade and party in the streets. It was fucking fabulous. Huge semi-trucks meandering slowly through the streets, pulling trailers full of party-goers dancing to techno, celebrating diversity. I'm not sure we could have picked a better day to be there, considering their recent dark history. Everyone was having a blast. Some passerby gave me a wink and a condom with a picture of two stick figures on it about to have buttsecks. Still got it, apparently. We wandered around the festivities buying beers and chocolate, until we were worn out and I bought Rindi dinner at some hole-in-the-wall Italian joint. The waiter was hilariously lackadaisical. He demonstrated this by being on his cell phone while bringing us, then pouring our wine. We were too stunned to do anything but laugh. Brussels was a short lived detour to fill time, as I said, so we left the next day on the TGV bullet train to Paris, thus using our last Eurail pass day. If you ever have the chance, take one of these fast trains in Europe. Moving so fast so close to the ground is a trip, to say the least.

Paris, France

At this point, I must say that cities are beginning to blur together. Lets take a step back for a second. Rindi and were just talking, as I write this, and she looks up from her candy crush or whatever the hell game shes playing and says,

"Wait, where are we? Ed... Edinburgh?" It honestly took me a second to respond.

"Yes. Yes, Edinburgh."

As I go through these pictures and upload them to link to your thirsty, thirsty eyeballs, I find myself having to triple check that I am in the correct set of pictures before sending their ones and zeroes up into the cloud. Just a bit of perspective.

Paris! Wondrous, ancient, home of the vampires Lestat, Armand, and their macabre little theatre. I purposefully spelled theatre wrong cause you're in France now. It's smell is an ambiguous mix of delicious baguettes and the old pungent grease & iron of the metro. The people are much more friendly than I would have expected. Almost none of them reeked of BO! We stayed another Generator hostel (the chain from above). This one wasn't as good. Again, no kitchen. We were even accosted trying to bring in our own take-away at one point (we realized that that is where they make a decent portion of their money; selling food). And this time the beds kinda sucked. Also they had this overbearing monster of a man at the door checking your key card to make sure you were legit.

We took the metro over to the LouvRe on day two. Pronounce that "r", apparently. It was everything I needed it to be. Sculptures that seemed alive, paintings of the same sort. I was a little disappointed with the little Gameboy 3D that they gave you for the audio guide, as it seemed to have trouble finding your location, and it didn't de-mystify any of the layout of the building at all. The best you can do is wander until the device figures out where you are and suddenly springs to life in your ears. The information it had, when it had it, was fascinating, though. It's worth mentioning (with approval from Rindi) that my girlfriend had the shits something fierce. She, knowing how much I was into it, trudged around this labyrinth the whole time without so much as a peep. Pun not intended. She was suffering by the end of it. We spent five hours getting lost in all the artwork. I saw a few of my favorites. The Mona Lisa was massively overrated. Hundreds and hundreds of people jostling for position to take a picture of a small painting that isn't even as good as a thousand other works in the museum. Don't get me wrong, Leo, I love your mind, but this one just wasn't worth it. Despite the best efforts of the Gameboy tour guide to proselytize to the contrary.

That's it for now. I promise (you can hold me to that) an update that brings us up to current within the next week, so look out for that shit!

Jordo

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