Pictures, Pictures, Pictures, and more Pictures

While we (barely) survived our flights back on Friday, I'm sad to say that a Paulaner pilsner glass we picked up in Amsterdam did not. Stephen's British Monopoly was only slightly smushed. Everything else made it just fine.

Saturday we were still a bit discombobulated, but we got ourselves together enough to catch a movie and a much longed for Mexican dinner, double spicy to make up for the blandness of Europe.

Sunday was more productive as the two of us prepared to get back to the grind. Part of our chores for the day included a trip to Costco to develop the pictures from our trip. Stephen nearly passed out when, at .15 a print, the total to develop our pictures came out to over $50. That's about 350 pictures if you don't have a calculator handy. And that's after I deleted the blurry, the duplicate, and the ugly.

For your viewing pleasure, they're all sorted and organized and posted here. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions or whatever your heart desires.

XXX IS Amsterdam

It's true, XXX is Amsterdam - and not even in the cheeky Vegas way...no, as it turns out, three black X's are the symbol for Amsterdam and have been for quite some time. ANYWAY:

The Diets (sp? or what we call the Dutch) are super duper nice. Everyone EVERYWHERE. The train ride was good - they fed and watered us to make sure we didn't die and for whatever reason, we were upgraded to first class. Trains are the way to go IMHO - fast, clean, comfortable, and they don't make me anxious with thoughts of certain death should something go wrong (probably just a horrible injury resulting in a scars that eclipse the ''cool" stage). ANYWAY:

Train ride got us into town round 14:00 (it's all 24 hour in Europe, baby) and that gave us a ton of time to check out the sites. We got a number of recommendations from our last group leader and were able to follow up on just about all of them. For Brian and Julissa (who leave before we get back), there's a pub called the Wildman which is fantastic (have the Trippel on draught), a place that makes specialty soups called the 'Soupkitchen', and you HAVE to find a pancake house. The pancakes are like crepes and they pile in some yummy stuff. Word on the street is a good coffeehouse/bar/cafe to visit is called the Greenhouse effect though I wouldn't know on that one. ANYWAY:

The place is something that has to be experienced to believe. I'm amazed at the prevalence of English - we haven't met anyone who does NOT speak it thus far. To give you an example, we visited a shop called Hajenius (Brian, you will like) which is a bit stuffy looking by all accounts and we were ready to walk back out rather than bother the sales staff in suits and ties with our questions, but the guy we met was extremely nice and when we apologized for not knowing any simple words in Dutch, he said "Don't learn it, it's a useless language." Quite the opposite from the French. ANYWAY:

We did the Anne Frank Huis which kind of makes your soul hurt, but is important to remember. We also hit up the cafe that Werner suggested and I must say it had us in stitches. Drove by the Boom Chicago - I'm hoping we'll make it there for lunch, not sure we'll make it for the comedy show they put on. We also walked the district with a certain hue of light (had some good Schwarma there, too) and were surprised by how safe and comfortable we felt. Some dood fell into the canal due to copious amounts of mushrooms, but other than that, drama free. Tomorrow we take a cruise on the river and visit a diamond place, the Rikjumuseum (sp, I'm sure), and the Van Gogh museum. We'll try and do some shopping on the way. No pictures for a while, sadly. Interweb is pricier in this hotel than anywhere else thus far, and I can't convince myself to shell out $26 for 24 hours. Especially since I'm using a interweb connection device in the lobby of the joint for free (just no ability to connect to our camera). ANYWAY:

Cheers!

Hunchbacks EVERYWHERE

Today we woke up and headed to the musee du Louvre as soon as we could which was a great idear due to the MASSIVE amounts of Japanese tourists. Wow. The museum itself is huge and we kept getting lost in the beast but there is SO much to see that we were always greeted by new stoof. Mona Lisa's smaller than I expected her to be - she's also a great deal more trampy with all that cleavage she exposes to anyone who's willing to stare at it. The crowd was immense for that and Venus de Milo which was a bit easier to appreciate for Stephen, less so for me. At any rate, giant check mark goes down for seeing those two works of art. In the afternoon, we headed to Notre Dame (after enjoying some ham and cheese crepes). It was amazing. Very intricate. Old. Neat. Crowded. Catholic. If you stand away from it a short distance, you can see it leans to the left. That night we went to a cabaret show that was only 'okay' as our tour guide put it, "Won't make you walk away smarter, just happy." I suppose it did the job at that. They had a crazy acrobatic dood who lifted himself up a rope one handed and just held the pose of raised legs without breaking a sweat. Tomorrow train ride to Ammy Dammy.

Time in Paris running out

We had our guided tour Sunday morn and it was le awesome. We started at le Tour Eiffel which has never jazzed me in the pictures I’ve seen. Up close it really is a work of art and is possibly one of those things that must be seen to be appreciated. The views from the second level were fantastic. The rest of the tour was spent taking in the sites first by bus, then by barge on le Seine. Both views of the city were fantastic. The afternoon was spent by us eating crepes on the way to Musee d’Orsay and then spending a few hours soaking up the art. Afterword we took the Metro back to our hotel and then went to dinner at a bistro our guide had suggested which had set menus/prices and has menus in both English and Japanese. I’ve been working on my pronunciation of the basic French words and phrases: Bonjour/bonsouir, deux sil vous plais non-fume. Merci. Worked a bit too well and we ended up getting French menus…then it was: Excuse moi monsieur, le menu en anglais sil vous plais? We then asked our waiter: parlais vous anglais? He said not really, however I do speak some Spanish…so the rest of our dealings were in Spanish as Corinne and I both understand and can speak a TON more Spanish than we can French. Kind of surreal – Americans speaking Spanish in a French bistro. We had a French gentleman on one side of us dining with his mother (who loves Americans, according to him – I’m guessing the liberation… his English was also much better than our French) and we had two Scots on the other side who both spoke decent French and were bemused by our use of Spanish to get things done. The food was awesome and the company made it that much better. They gave us a recommendation for Montmarte, but we don’t have enough time ☹. Louvre manana.

Proof that the French have the ability to smell better

Saturday morning was gobbled up by going across the channel in the Eurostar. It was a comfortable trip and we enjoyed chatting up some Brits on holiday to France as well as members of our group. I asked the Brits if the French were rude to them or if it was just the Americans – good news! They don’t discriminate, they dislike all foreigners! Our initial impression of Paris wasn’t the best as our drive took us past buildings that had seen better days and lunch was spent in a bistro that wasn’t all that good. That and the tour guide made me a bit paranoid as he warned us against gypsies to no end. Apparently these Romanian immigrants accost touristas by asking if they speak English, maybe presenting a fake baby in their arms and asking for cheddar, or perhaps just distract you while another gypsy lifts your wallet. Charming! Our first afternoon was spent with me being on high alert as we walked Le Seine and took in the gorgeous buildings and Corinne telling me to chill out. Eventually the sites did the chilling for me – Paris is gorgeous if you’re in the right spots. We metro’d it to Musee d’Orsay (which was closed) so we used the opportunity to take in views of the major attractions. Our hotel room is ultra modern and better to look at than live in. The bathroom in particular is an engineering dump (pardon the pun) as water cascades past the partial enclosure onto the floor. It does have a door that allows for the silhouette from the outside – tres bien! Naughty French.

King of England

In the morning of our last day in the UK (Friday) we hit up Costa Coffee and found that I am employed by Wells Fargo as of July 1st (so long as I avoid accidental needle sticks and poorly labeled pastries in Amsterdam ☺). A big shout out to the new Overlords! Our last day was spent shopping for our peeps back home along Oxford Street and exploring the tower of London – both awesome. Oxford has a mixture of shoppes and is somewhat of a treat to walk down and along the side streets. I found my holy grail as you can see by the picture - it takes up a fair amount of space but is TOTALLY WORTH IT.

The tube took us right to the tower where we had a good time exploring the fortress. We could have used more days in England – probably around 30 or so – but alas… I had two personal triumphs on our last day – one was assisting a French tourist in locating a road near our hotel, and the other was assisting a BRIT in working the tube. Could Knighthood be all that far?

Stuffed Pandas

So we’ve left England and I think the consensus amongst us is that we’ve both come to fancy more than we had thought we would initially. Thursday we had a lame guided tour and where we were rushed past many sites, much to our chagrin. St. Paul’s cathedral is beautiful but we were unable to explore it…ah well. The queue at Madame Tussaud’s was quite long and we well had our fill of standing to see waxed representations of people who would not wait in a queue to see any representation of us. We left for the Natural History Museum, which is geared toward children with its interactive displays but was nonetheless interesting for us big kids. They had a display where you could turn a container to see what an excrement of our Happy Footed Marching Penguins contained (I’ll give you a hint – chunks of fish) and could even put your nose up to a display which would show you what it SMELLS like (I’ll give you another hint – barf). No sugar coating in England – another display showed the decomposition process on preserved bunnies.