Success! But not with this friggin’ French keyboard.
IMG_0898
Originally uploaded by Poom247.
To recap what I did after yesterday’s Paris to London Eurostar debacle, I’m headed to Brussels (again) and taking the Eurostar from there to London for a total of $86; luckily it’s only a French holiday and not a Belgian one as well. It adds an extra 2-3 hours to my journey but beats the assreaming I would’ve paid going from Paris.
I’ve spent a grand total of almost 30 actual hours being a touron around Paris and feel like I’ve barely seen everything–it’s quite crazy. I can’t stand this French keyboard which has just enough keys out of place to give even a crappy typist like me seizures. I’ll try to post my thoughts on Paris while in London, though I can’t guarantee anything since I only have two days there. If you don’t hear from me, I’ll be sure to fill you in when I get home!
The first official “oh shit” moment.
This weekend marks some sort of holiday here in France, so EVERYTHING by train or plane to London is already booked. I went to the Eurostar office at Gare du Nord, where they told me the ONLY trains left to London cost 223 euro, or nearly $300. My railpass is useless in getting a discount as well. Fuck.
I checked going to London from Brussels online, which appears to be cheaper but is a complete pain. I need to go check reservations on the Thalys line back to Brussels…hope it’s not full too. 
New criteria for choosing a restaurant…
Wow…Paris IS as expensive as they say. It’s easily the most expensive city I’ve hit so far, though London is next (doh!). So I’ve developed new criteria for choosing where to eat. Menu? Nope. Location? Kinda. Free wi-fi so I can post to my blog? That was dumb luck. The #1, most important criteria? There was an orange tabby cat lying lazily underneath a table in front. He even wandered inside for some attention, which I was happy to give him. 
Tomorrow is Day 2 of the mad dash around Paris. I plan to spend lots of time at the Louvre and also see the Catacombes. Thank goodness for unlimited use metro passes–they’re losing money on me bigtime the way I use public transit in these European cities.
Damp and wet…that’s Amsterdam.
Much to my surprise, Amsterdam turned out to be very enjoyable even with all the tourists there. My first impression was something to the effect of “Holy hell there are a lot of people here!” at the train station. I can’t explain it, but you can trek all over the place and do your own thing amidst the hordes of people and not be bothered by them, which is exactly what I did. (Maybe they’re all high or something? EVERYTHING in the city centre smells like weed, and I normally have trouble smelling the stuff.) Unlike Antwerp, the city retains its sense of identity quite well, with the buildings appearing much as they did centuries ago (though some of them now have different uses, like Oude Kerk (Old Church) which is now a civic center of some sort). Wandering around at night, I nearly faceplanted into one of the canals thinking it was a park/field, but that only happened once. It was walking around at night that also revealed the magnificence of the houses on the canals; for whatever reasons, many people don’t bother closing their curtains so you can see right in…and be insanely jealous of how beautiful their property is. I realized what everybody can chip in and get me for Christmas–one of those canal houses! It doesn’t even have to be furnished or anything! Unfurnished will do just fine!
Regarding my wandering all over the place at night, no need to worry about trouble finding me when I do that; I found it interesting that I never once felt unsafe even while walking WAY off the beaten path. For the most part, the same has ben true in the other cities I’ve visited (especially Brugge, which has a lot of sidestreets and alleys where you don’t see another soul ever at night). Toon (my grad school advisor) pointed out that it’s this feeling of security that leads some European travelers into trouble when they visit the U.S. and venture into scary neighborhoods…a very good point and a very stark difference between the two continents.
The title of this post is not a reference to the Redlight District, which was actually wet from the rain on the night I went. In short, I thought the Redlight District was horribly overrated. Without a shadow of a doubt, the caliber of the strip clubs in Montreal and Vegas utterly demolish what I saw in Amsterdam. Sure they get more freaky in Amsterdam, but all the women could best be described as “butterfaces”. I didn’t partake in the ahem…extracurricular activities the city has to offer (the ones that aren’t legal in the U.S., anyway), but the women selling their wares in the red lit windows was one part fascinating, one part odd, and no parts attractive (to me, anyway). It was definitely worth seeing once, but that’s about it.
For the most sobering experience EVER, one need not go any further than the Anne Frank House, which tells the Anne and her family in quite thorough, yet interesting detail. I went in with an evening ticket I puchased from the tourist office (saving myself what looked like a long wait in line) and managed to spend almost an hour and a half there–a long time considering this isn’t a big museum or anything of the sort. Another side of the WWII experience that I started off learning about in Berlin…how horrible their experiences must have been. Unexpectedly, that was one of the highlights for me…just around the corner from my hotel too.
I also went to visit Toon in Nijmegen, a university community that’s about a 1.5 hour train ride from Amsterdam; Nijmegen itself is in a relatively suburban area–a very nice college town with actual civilization nearby and fields and forests around it. The towns around it are very forested and rural as well, but there’s not the sense of being out in the boonies because there are bike and walking trails with lots of people using them creating a sense of community (i.e., something Storrs will never have). You are technically in the boonies, but you don’t ever get the feeling of being isolated. The Dutch countryside was picturesque and relaxing too…even though I failed to take pictures of it due to an allergy attack from forces unknown.
The Cliff’s Notes: Amsterdam–very much worth the visit, but for all the culture it has to offer and not the infamous activities in which you can partake. Nijmegen is a very pleasant side-trip as well–I highly recommend renting a car to see all it has to offer.
More on Brugge…plus Antwerp and Amsterdam.
As you can guess from my last post, I thought Brugge was an excellent city very much worth a visit. It’s exactly what I wanted to see on my visit to Europe–some place quaint and mostly unchanged from centuries ago. I’ll post some more pics as soon as I have a chance, which would not be now as my CF reader is in my other pack.
I stopped in Antwerp yesterday on the way to Amsterdam. As I told Gail on her postcard, what I saw of the city felt like a gigantic shopping mall. Granted, it was a really nice shopping mall with historic buildings all around, but far, far too commercial. (I did manage to get a new backpack though–R.I.P. my old Jansport pack which has seen its last trip.) It also didn’t help that you were greeted by what looked like a warzone upon leaving the main train station; everything around it was under serious construction. The city itself has some very nice sites to see (like most cities in Europe), but the architecture was pretty, um…interesting. And not in the good way like in Berlin either. It was a mishmash of old and new, with apparently no cue towards making things blend in. Next to a 200 year old building with a lovely facade, you’d have a new office complex that looked completely dissimilar or something equally odd. The fact that many of the buildings were in a state of disrepair didn’t help either. I’m definitely glad I didn’t plan much time there, an afternoon was plenty. On the other hand, the Hague (Den Haag) looked quite interesting from the train–I wish I had stopped there instead.
Next stop: The Artemis Hotel in Amsterdam. On the map, it didn’t look too far away. In real life, it was FREAKING FAR–a $30 cab ride one-way from the central train station. Oops. And public transit wasn’t a good option, as the cabbie told me it was a 5 minute walk to a tram, and then more than an hour ride (one-way) on 3 different trams/buses. Um, no. I checked in last night into the fru-fruest (is that a word?) hotel I’ve EVER stayed in. Ever see Lost in Translation with the hotel in Tokyo? Well, that was me upon getting up to my room. I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights until I noticed that you had to stick your room key in a fixture near the door, which activated all the lights. Okay. Then I decided to grab a bite to eat at the hotel’s restaurant, where the only other patrons were a business man and an escort. How do I know she was an escort? Let’s just say super low-rise jeans and a thong riding up her waist with a revealing top plus the dissimilarity of how the guy was dressed (very formal business attire) = not a couple. Interesting diners aside, I got a tiny salad served with some kind of strange rabbit pate thing; the rabbit was actually pretty tasty though. I think the waitress just about fell over laughing when I asked her twice what the weird pate thing she put in front of me was. She seemed to understand though, like she’s been asked that question more than once (and not by me).
I checked out of there this morning and took another $30 cab ride back to city center. And here we are. I just found another hotel (Hotel Aspen); currently my belongings are in a locker at the train station. I owe Mealy a big one for offering that useful piece of advice regarding the availability of lockers at all European train stations–that’s been a big lifesaver that’s allowed me to explore/investigate Brussels, Antwerp, and now Amsterdam without lugging my bigass frame pack with me.
And remember, what happens in Amsterdam doesn’t get blogged. Yet.
