The last of the Netherlands - the compressed airport version

I'm currently sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home.  I meant to write sooner, but the last couple of days have been really long whirlwinds, and the one place we stayed where I had some time, the internet was really spotty.

The best tree!

Our second day in Amsterdam was really good.  We were up early, thanks to the shitty Germans, but it meant that we got a pretty good start to our day.  We walked through town to the Anne Frank House, and saw, well, the house that Anne Frank lived in during the war.  I don't have any photos, as they were not allowed.  It was crazy busy.  We had to book our tickets online in advance, and show up for a specific time slot, and we spent probably an hour or two from there standing in a slow line, going through the museum, and then into all the houses different floors.  At the request of Otto Frank, the sole surviving member of the Frank family during the war, the rooms have been left empty.  That being said, there was one wall that was original and preserved, in Anne's room, with all her posters up on the wall.  Her original diaries still exist also, and we got to view them under glass.

The Rijksmuseum

A sneaky, sneaky shot of what teenagers do best.

It was good to see the Anne Frank House (Huis), but I really didn't enjoy it due to how busy it was.

After that, we headed over to the Rijksmuseum and wandered through the park nearby.  There was an ice rink with people skating on it, and we went to the Van Gogh museum.  I was really excited about it.  I have so far seen his works in the Museé d'Orsay, been to Auvers-sur-Oise to visit the church he painted, the final house he lived in before he committed suicide, and to his and his brother Theo's grave site.  The Van Gogh museum was three floors of paintings (again, no pictures), and by far the biggest collection of works I've ever seen.  We stayed there a while.  I stared at everything.

I wanted to be inside the d.

We were pretty museumed out by the end of the day.  It was a lot of walking - we ended up just going to the grocery store for dinner and crashing early.

The next day, we packed our bags and checked out, but kept our bags with the hostel desk and headed over to the Rijksmuseum.  We weren't super interested in doing another museum, but the building was impressive and we had a museum pass to use up anyhow.  It ended up being massive inside, much larger than either Jamie or myself suspected.  We were there for two hours, and I think we only saw half the museum.  I took a few pictures, because we were allowed to this time around.

Feeling the time crunch to get to our next destination, we made our way slowly out of Amsterdam, but not before stopping for cake at a shop, and stopping in a MAC store to buy myself some new lipstick.  We made our way very slowly out of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam Centraal Station.

The houses got cute in Oosterbeek.

We got on the train to Oosterbeek.  It was the site of a major battle in world war two, called Operation Market Garden.  Allied air-forces banded together to try and capture and regain hold of this area of the Netherlands, hoping to push back German forces - it was part of a larger plot to win the war by Christmas 1944.  German forces demolished a few key bridges in the area, delaying the ground troop reinforcements, and when the air troops were overrun, there was no ground support as backup.  Short story, the Germans won, and completely leveled the surrounding area.  Everyone was killed.

In Oosterbeek, there is a war cemetery and museum in honour of the fallen soldiers.  After poking around the war cemetery for a while - I was adamant we had to leave before dark - we went and caught the last half hour of the museum before it closed.  Because we were so close to closing time, they let us in for free.  We felt bad though, so we each bought a pin to help out the museum a little.

After that, we hopped back on the train to Arnhem, where we were staying for the night.  Arnhem is one of the towns that was totally destroyed during Operation Market Garden.  Maybe it's because it was dark when we arrived, or because we got completely lost trying to find the hostel (to the point where we rode a bus in a circle, walked for a while, and then I said screw it, and paid 15 euro for a taxi) but neither one of us really liked Arnhem.  Our hostel was so far out of the way that we ended up with cold grocery store snacks as dinner again, since there were no restaurants anywhere in the area, and the Netherlands seems to like hostels without kitchens.  We only stayed at two places that had kitchens on the entire trip.  The region is the gateway to a large national park, but we only had the night to stay, so we never checked it out.  Really, we should have seen one or two less things.  Oh well.

The next morning, we got back to the station with only some confusion, and hopped the train to Maastricht, where we had a hotel booked for the only night of the trip.  And it was such a cool hotel!  It is called The Dutch, and it was very 70s/80s themed.  Everything was painted pink and white, there were flamingos everywhere (the real ones were taxidermied), and the elevator played elevator music.  Coffee and fruit were free, and there was a foosball table.  Some of the larger rooms have disco balls, but we couldn't afford that room.

We checked in, and immediately hopped on the train to head over to Valkenburg, a 15 minute ride away, because there was a Christmas market.  IN A CAVE.  IT WAS SO COOL.

The Christmas Market was really awesome!  We walked through this old medieval style town (Valkenburg) to the entrance of the caves, which were in the ruins of a castle, and once we got in, there was shop after shop of homemade Christmas items.  Dry-cured sausage, tree ornaments, candles, sweaters, etc.  I got myself a really nice knitted sweater, and bought some Christmas presents.  And I had gluwein with amaretto in it, which was so lovely that I think I'm going to start using that instead of brandy when I mull wine from now on.  I tried to convince Jamie to have some too, but he said that the only thing worse than wine was warm wine.  I guess there's no accounting for taste.

WWII graffiti.

The caves had some really cool history too.  They were built in the 1400s to act as an escape route for the castle inhabitants, but when the castle fell into ruin, the caves were forgotten about.  In 1937, they were rediscovered, and WWII soldiers used them to hide from the Germans.  There was graffiti all over the walls in charcoal from the war, which was pretty neat.

After we left the caves, we wandered through town for a bit, and it had a really nice Christmassy feel.  Lots of lit-up trees, and decorations.  Sinterklaas comes earlier than Christmas does, and is celebrated in early December.  Maastricht was just starting to set-up as we left.

We got back to Maastricht and went for dinner at a great thai place, and then wandered around town for a bit to get a feel for it.  We also went to the bar in the hotel, so I could finally try jenever.  The bartender was surprised when I asked to try it - according to her, it is just an old man's drink that is drank before bed as a night cap.  We both tried it anyways...and it was terrible.  The first sip or two was fine, but it got progressively worse as it warmed up.  It was awful.  I had to wash it out of my mouth with a gin and tonic.

Yesterday morning, we got up early and wandered around Maastricht for a while.  We kept bumping into these two guys who were on a fairly frantic hunt for a 'coffeeshop' - place to buy weed.  We saw them walking in circles through town over and over.  We must have bumped into them three or four times.  Some people come here for different reasons, I guess.

A rainbow sidewalk!

Last night, we spent in Delft.  We got in pretty late in the day, thanks to wanting to spend more time in Maastricht - I could live there, too.  And in Utrecht.  And Haarlem.  There are some really lovely places here in the Netherlands.  Maastricht was just a dream.

Delft was another one of those places.  We quickly visited the Nieuw Kerk (new church) and Oude Kerk (old church) while we waited for our hostel to open for check-in, and we watched a lady paint authentic delftware pottery.  She was nice and answered my questions.  Did you know the paint starts out black, and turns that blue colour only after it's been in the kiln?  Me neither!  I wanted to come home with a vase or a teapot or something, but it was ludicrously expensive, so I settled for a little bag of beads.  Maybe I can make some bracelets or something.

Just a gnome and some goldfish in a construction site.  I don't question these things.

He wasn't happy about this.

Last night, I frantically bought as much cheese and chocolate toast sprinkles as would fit in my luggage, and did that anxious thing I do where I debate in my head whether or not I ever need to come home again.  I decided I didn't have enough money left in my bank to make it until payday, so here I am in the airport.

Now I just have to survive another four months of work before I can take some more time off.  I think I'll go to Iceland in April.  And in the meantime, pretend I'm not thirty, and learn to live without cafe créme...or save up for an espresso machine.  I think I'm addicted.  I had one an hour ago, and I might grab one more before I hop on my flight in an hour.  It's a shot of espresso long-pulled through the machine for 15-30 seconds, and has this oily, greasy, foamy frothiness on it that tastes like caramel and served in a tiny cup.  I can't stop drinking them.

Something Something Birthday - a Girl Refuses to Turn Thirty

The party was...interesting.  If I was a university student again, and living in Utrecht, I would definitely go to all sorts of these underground things.

The Dutch party too hard.  We left after the first set...at 01:30.  The other two bands hadn't even arrived yet by then.  They were one of those bands that sounds great live, but I probably wouldn't listen to them otherwise.  I can't even describe them - funk meets death metal meets psychedelic rock? ...maybe.  There were four band members, and they were all dressed up in scary make up and ridiculous outfits - the lead guitarist was in a see-through billowy light blue robe and short shorts, for example.

Our second day in Utrecht was met with a late start - we were both sore and tired from the night before.  We've been averaging about 10km a day walking around, and we're getting a bit tired.  We went into the town centre and checked out the local cathedral.  Communion was in session, so we looked into getting into the bell tower.  We could only do it with a guided tour, which to be honest, was expensive and kinda lame.  We climbed all 465 steps to the top of the 113m tower, but I felt like it was really rushed, and I didn't overly enjoy it.  No fault to our tour guide though - I just don't enjoy guided tours.

The last very top section of the bell tower was a really steep, narrow, spiral staircase, and it made me claustrophobic.  If I wasn't first in the line of people, I probably would have curled in a ball on the stairs.  It was very dizzying.  Going down was okay.  The view from the top was pretty neat, though with all the protective fencing up, I needed to stand on the benches at the top to see anything.

We spent an hour one evening trying to find this damn tower.  We never did.  We could see it, but no matter where we walked, we couldn't figure out how to get into the courtyard.  I googled it - it's apparently an abandoned museum.  I couldn't find anything else out about it. 

Stupid staircase.

When we climbed back down, communion was done, and the public was allowed back into the cathedral.  We wandered around a little, but St. Martin's Cathedral (Dom Cathedral) wasn't as spectacular as the huge church we looked at in Haarlem.  We did catch part of a choir group performing inside the cathedral though, and when we were in earlier, we listened to the organ play, which was beautiful.  After that, we wandered around for a while and then headed back to the hostel for a few hours to chill.

Later that evening, we went back out again for a bit to wander around and grab a bite to eat.  I bought a big bag of tomatoes, and haven't been in a place with a kitchen since, so I have no idea what to do with them.

This church had red glowing inside, there was a creepy chime noise every few seconds, and this tree kept lighting up with the image of a stag.  Also....the lightposts were flickering.  It was hella creepy.  

We left early yesterday morning to head to Amsterdam.  Our hostel (which is terrible and huge and I feel like I'm a student in a dorm or something) is in a park.  It was brisk out yesterday, but the sun was still warm on the skin (they call this winter?) and we immediately set out to explore the park.  I saw some parakeets, or tiny parrots, or something, and some coots, and one duck who seemed jealous I wasn't taking photos of her.  Lots of people were walking their dogs, and it made me miss Jasper.

We walked down to Centraal station and took a canal tour, which was actually pretty cool.  I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.  We spent an hour cruising the canals, and listening to a history recording as we passed by buildings.  I saw a swan, and some sad, half sunk boats, and the best graffiti!

We ate some fries from a cone with a tiny wooden fork, with what couldn't be any less than a half cup of mayo on top - they are sold at little stands all over the place.  I thought maybe the sauce was hollandaise sauce or something, but it just tasted like mayo.  And it was awful.  I felt so sick after I ate it.  So....there's that dutch food tried and done.  We've mostly been living off of french fries, giant waffles, bread, cheese, fruit, coffee, and beer.  It's hard to eat healthy without a kitchen.  Most of the hostels we are staying in don't have them.

Speaking of beer, last evening, we went on a journey to find a brewery in an abandoned windmill, for birthday beers.  It was called Brouwerij t' IJ (I think it is a play on words - the IJ (ei) is the local river, so the brewery is called the brewer-ee-tee).  It has a little pub attached to it, and we are so glad the beers were good, because it took us a whole damn hour to walk there.  We misjudged how far it was.  But the interior was really cool.  We ordered beers (which, like their coffees, are small in this country).  We both tried the amber ale and the in-house pilsner, which this country is famous for.  I tried some cheese and dry-cured sausage that was actually tasty, although I had to eat it in tiny pieces because the texture weirded me out, but I didn't want to miss out on something just because I don't like to eat it.  I'm not likely to make a habit out of it.

After a few beers, we walked to the Red Light District.  On the way, we passed the zoo, and I saw flamingos!  I've never seen them before.  I thought they sounded like ducks, but there may have just been a duck hiding in there somewhere.

I think the Queen of Holland is in her palace right now.  There was a crowd, and a TON of security.  

The red light district was exactly what I thought it would be, and nothing like I thought it would be.  There was a theatre where you could watch live sex on stage (which we did not do), and there were prostitutes in the windows, but most of them had dead eyes.  Any time I stopped to watch one of them, they frowned at me, but at one station, a group of men came behind me, and the woman started to flirt with them.  I was grumpy about it - I feel like there is some kind of heteronormative standard.

We both felt uncomfortable about the place, and headed home.  I only saw one woman who looked like she was alright with herself - I smiled at her, and she smiled a real smile back.  The rest looked bored (possibly because it was a Monday night?), and I didn't like their eyes.  Everyone had dead eyes.

This morning, we were rudely awoken at 06:15 by some drunk Germans and Dutchmen who came stomping into the room, and yelling, and running around.  They were assholes.  I hope they have the worst hangover when they wake up this afternoon.

I guess today is going to be an early day now.