From Jenn:
For our birthdays this year, Julia and I decided to go big. On a gloomy afternoon in March over G-Chat, we planned our annual birthday excursion via a multiple choice question. We went with choice "C" of our self-created exam. The itinerary: Amsterdam, Belgium, and Paris. The basis: some people like chicken and waffles, we like Belgium beers and waffles. There is absolutely no agenda for this trip other than to consume. Unless you consider touring breweries and sitting at cafes people-watching as culture, we probably won't return to the U.S. more worldly. If anything, we'll return simply with some extra baggage.
Our last collaborations were a 2007 spa weekend in Napa, Fleet Week Chicago 2006, Christmas 2006 Shopping Spectacular in NYC, and Spring Break in Cabo San Lucas 2006. Cabo was an ugly scene...a little too much time spent at El Squid Row. We are older and wiser now....maturity is automatic in your late 20s.
My flight was highly uneventful and relatively painless. I put on my best pouty face and dropped a few comments about my past knee surgeries to get an exit row seat. It took just over 10 hours to fly from San Francisco to Amsterdam. For this trip, I downloaded the first season of "The Riches" to enjoy on my iPod for the flight, train rides, and to entertain my jet-lagged self when I'm unable to sleep tonight. Also, I played about 20 games of action-packed solitaire on my blackberry. Good times.
I chose to take a shared shuttle to my hotel in Amsterdam Centrum. Private taxis were way too expensive and I was feeling much too lazy to take the train in so this seemed like a great middle ground. I read about this service, much like SuperShuttle in California. Unfortunately, I failed to purchase the proper ticket for the shuttle. I asked the guy placing people in vans if I could pay cash and he was like "good morning...get on the bus." I obliged. I guess there was a language barrier. When the driver tried to collect everyone's ticket prior to departure, I explained this to him. He said I needed a ticket. So, I tried to hop off the van to purchase one. The driver told me he would drive me over to the ticket counter. During all of this, the 6 Euros in my car were getting very restless...you see, they had tickets. I was happy to hop off, but the driver wanted me to stay so he put my bag back into the van. We drove to the end of the airport and the driver jumped out with me to walk me into the airport and get my ticket. We sat and chit-chatted with the guy at the ticket-counter for a while. By the time we got back to the van, everyone in the van hated me. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but when they broke out in applause when we finally left the airport, I could tell they have been talking a lot of smack. I just smiled. The driver and I had a great chat and the old folks in the back just had their shorts in a bunch as far as I could tell.
Julia did not fair so well with her flight from NYC. Her particular flight out of Newark was delayed 3 hours. However, with her exceptional urban skills, she braved the train from the airport.
We both arrived at the Renaissance Ambassador Hotel within an hour of each other this morning. By noon, we were out the door and off to explore.
Our Amsterdam City Walk as told by Julia:
Our compass on this trip is Rick Steves. Gotta love him and his handy guidebook. We started with the walking tour of the city, and pretty quickly covered most of the main streets, pretty courtyards, wandering through the Dam Square (let's see how long it takes until I stop laughing every time I say that). Unfortunately for us, the Royal Palace and the other pretty buildings in the Dam Square (hee hee) were obstructed with a ferris wheel and carnival rides. No worries, we had the first coffee of our jetlagged day 1 and kept walking. I heard the Flemish fries are famous here, so I went like a local and got some in a cone, covered with a pound of lard (aka mayonnaise). Mmmmm. Lard. Let's say that will be my last experiment with Flemish food.
We kept walking, across the prettiest canals, and continuing the scavenger hunt for the different roof gable types. It's pretty amazing how creative the Dutch get with their roofs (rooves?). We've seen the bell-shaped roof, the pointy roof, and the 'neck' roof. But the step and the spout are apparently more elusive. The other part of the scavenger hunt was trying to guess which coffeeshop was actually a coffeeshop, and which was a "coffeeshop." You think it would be obvious... but the one that was full of pool tables was a bit of a mystery - that one could go either way, really.
Another highlight of the tour for me was the flower market - where Jenn fell in love with some roses, and we seriously debated getting a lovely bouquet for our room. We both had visions of biking through tulip fields before we came to the Netherlands, so I have a feeling there's a major case of flower overload coming up... especially since we're planning a trip to the flower garden tomorrow morning.
Speaking of biking, the Amsterdammers sure love their bikes. We had to keep dodging them every time we crossed the street. I hear they have as many bikes in this country as people. It's so adorable!
Oh yeah, we went to the Van Gogh museum. We noted that he did many self-portraits. Hottie! And we walked by the Anne Frank house (the line was too long. really). Culture for the day... check. Jenn says we can just walk near culture and automatically get culture points. Then we sat at a café by the canal for some sandwiches and beer. Prices weren't too bad. Oh wait... they're NOT dollars. That's gonna hurt when we come home and check the bank account. For now, let's just pretend they're dollars.
I think we're totally fitting in. We learned a Dutch word today... it was the word for thank you. Dank u wel. We haven't used it yet, but we totally could. Maybe when we're out tonight. It's Jenn's birthday, so we thought we could be classy late-20-somethings and sip a glass of wine at a bar. Orrrrrrr... we could join a frat party that hops to 6 different bars, gets us unlimited vodka shots (with the potential for jager shots), and promises to have at least 100 traveling tourists along for the ride... Which will we pick??? Stay tuned...
One more quick note from Jenn: There are no dogs here. I have only seen 2 dogs and these were not even real dogs; they were of the "rat" variety. If I had a dog, I would put a huge basket on the front of my bike and take it everywhere. I'd even give it goggles to protect his eyes from the lightning speed at which I would ride my bike at if I were to own one. I feel a little cheated right now. It would be nice to pet a dog on my birthday.
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