Our travel blog - originally intended as a
one-time only, epic adventure - has surpassed expectations and we’re gonna give
the crowds exactly what they’ve been begging for: a sequel! DA DA DA...
From the masterminds who brought you “Too
Jetlagged to Come up With a Witty Title” and other lesser known hits, comes the
travel blogging event of the season!
Get ready to experience something so groundbreaking, so life-changing,
it has already been likened to an improved version of the bible.
“Amsterbeen’s
Dam Awesome”
By Neil Loewen, Kendra Eyolfson, & Alice
Berents
Alternate Title: Phlegmsterdam
So After the awesome time that was our first day
in Amsterdam, we had no idea how we could follow it up with anything near as
fun. But we had to give it a try
so we thought we would set out early Thursday morning for Anne Frank
house. Don’t expect many laughs
here - holocaust-related museum’s tend to lack much levity. On the way to Anne Frank’s we decided
we needed some brekky to tide us over.
After taking pictures of every single canal we encountered, we came upon
a nice little restaurant called letting.
Google translate tells me it means the same thing in Dutch as it does in
English, so I have no idea why it was called such a boring name. The food was anything but boring. As per yoozh (i have no idea how you
would shorten “usual”) when we eat in Amsterdam, we can’t find any actual Dutch
food so we eat Mexican! or Italian! or McDonald’s! So Alice got some Italian pesto thing and Kendra got
“American Pancakes” (woot) and I got a croissant but Kendra’s pancakes stole
the show because apparently Dutch people hold the belief that to make something
American you just gotta add bacon.
I think that this is fairly accurate. (sidebar: Beer Can in a British
accent sounds like Bacon in Jamaican. Try it, it will blow your mind. Anywaaaay). Ya. They had bacon cooked into the pancakes. With waay too much syrup to be
legal. I love Amsterdam. So we ate that up and drank down the
mini, super strong coffee, and then waddled over to Annie’s for a tour. The museum is the house the Frank
family hid in for years, and has been completely restored for
authenticity. This museum was
really well done. I recommend it
as mandatory Amsterdam for any future travelers. Afterwards we walked back to the hostel down some random
amazing street and Kendra wrote in her diary, I hung out on facebook, and alice
had a minor freakout about us having to book the next days train tickets or
something. I wasn’t really listening. (sidenote: Alice is an amazing organiser,
love alice) But we eventually did
get up and go get the tickets, before once again returning to the hostel and, I
have absolutely no idea - and at the time did not care - what Kendra and Alice
did but - I slept hardcore like a baby/log for like 2 hours. Jet lag was not yet quite out of my
system.
Immediately upon awakening, I was offered a shot
of flugel, still no idea what it is, but its fluorescent and gets you out of
bed quite effectively. The
Trynamic Trio next went to the bar in our hostel (yes our hostel had a bar) and
did the 4 jagerbombs for 10 bucks, only because we can’t pass up or turn down a
decent sale. We then headed down
the alley to a (way too) classy (for us) establishment where we had Magner’s
cider, only because I had never had it, and the nice bar-lady taught us how to
properly speak Dutch. We then
ditched that place for the first place we saw that served Amstel, only because
we had to have authentic Amstel in Amsterdam. There we sat at the bar with a couple other people who I
assumed were Dutch. I was
impressed when they knew where Manitoba was and I told them all about how dumb
Americans are cuz they know nothing about Canada. One of the gentlemen, named Jules, then informed me that he
was from Boston, which, I BELIEVE, makes him American. This was awkward, but I handled it like
a pro and made conversation with him for a while, rebuilding our, and Canada’s,
recently shattered reputation as nice folk. I guess I thought if I talked to him enough he would forget
I called his people dumb?
Anyway, we ended up befriending him, along with everyone else within a 20 metre radius
of the bar, and he offered to give us a tour of the famed Red Light
District. He also took us to the
skinniest alley in Amsterdam, which was random but made for a good
photo-op. Eventually we ended up
at a Heineken bar, to complete our tour of Dutch beers and pubs. Here we became even better friends with
the bartender and she spent a great deal of time teaching, or at least trying
to teach us, to say Dutch tongue twisters. Plenty of phlegming necessary for pronouncing almost every
Dutch word ensued. We didn’t
really learn a whole lot but my throat is still kinda sore. Alice got started talking about lamb at
some point in the night, and never really stopped, so Jules showed us to a
Dutch-ish food place that served lamb and other stuff. Jules (American), and the Dutch guy
serving us, who had never met each other, interestingly talked to each other
entirely in Arabic. We were kind
of thrown off but were too hungry to ask about it. When it came my time to order I thought I’d get something
easy, but was still obsessed with being AS DUTCH AS POSSIBLE, so the
conversation went something like this:
Server: “Vat vould you like?”
Me: Can I have a hamburhghg(intense
phlegming)hghghair?
Server: a what?
Me: (timidly) hamburger?
I pretty much decided to stop phlegming
everything right there. So
apparently in Holland a hamburger is just a patty with no bun, but whatevs, it
was delish. I thought I’d spruce
up my fries with some ketchup so I smothered them in it but found out much too
late that it was hot sauce and not ketchup, which really destroyed my taste
buds after finishing half of the fiery fries. Meanwhile, Kendra was busy chasing the not-wanting-any-crazy-canadian-company
cat that lived at the restaurant, and taking plenty of pictures of it. I ended up eating nearly all her
food. After our late late lunch we
decided to go home, arranging to meet Jules the next day at some
now-long-forgotten corner at 9 am.
Luckily we told him to leave if we weren’t there by 9:30 because we
didn’t even attempt to meet him there, and we never saw him again.
So today we woke up groggily from the crazy
night before and trekked off to the Van Gogh Museum. We didn’t really use a map so we ended up take the scenic 12
mile long round about route, which culminated in Alice slipping on some snow
and creating an epic, slow motion, seeming as though she had 6 legs shooting
out in all directions, fall to the ground, where she sat in embarrassment. We
picked her up while laughing hysterically with/at her, and finally made it to
the museum. For a building full of
paintings it was pretty sweet, and we enjoyed it SO much more than the
Rijksmuseum of two days prior. We then caught a canal boat tour back to our
hostel and saw some more awesome Amsterdam architecture. Interesting Fact: all of the buildings in Amsterdam lean
forward. So much so that it is
easily noticeable. At the top of
each building there is a hook that hangs above the street. Jules taught us that this is because
Amsterdam is so cramped and the buildings are so tight that much furniture
(say, a piano) cannot be fit into the building through the door, so it has to
be hoisted up the side of the building and brought in through the window. Coolio. Anyway, the canal tour was pretty sweet, and then while
booking it to the train station to meet our train, we stopped at a McDonald’s,
and it was sweet. I got a
“McKrocker” and it was some delicious dutch sauce/meat/patty thing in a bun and
I want more. Also, the fries come
with some mayo-y mustardy thing that I want to call Hollandaise but maybe only
because it was in Holland. We will
never know.
We then hopped on the train and happily enjoyed
the beautiful ride through the Dutch countryside, until the conductor came
along and informed us that we were sitting in First Class, illegally, having
only paid for second class. We
rather shamefully carried our luggage through all of the first class (while on
a moving train, huge backpacks make you top heavy and easily tipped over - it
took a while) while everyone stared at us with searing eyes, or so it
felt. We made it to the very end
of the train and found our seats.
After a few minutes, the cutest little kid in the world came over,
obviously sent by his mother, and asked us where we were from. We began to talk to him and soon
discovered that he was like the smartest kid we had ever met. He was about seven years old, but
smarter than all of us combined.
He also loved to act, and was quite flamboyant, and we sat and watched
him for like 10 minutes as he gave us the news while acting like he was a news
anchor. on television. (real news
stories: we learned all about the earthquakes in Haiti, etc.) He kept sending it over to his little
sister for sports or something but she would say that it wasn’t time yet and he
would resume his spiel. This
newscast included full commercials for things like “leg-laps (your lap)” which
included such benefits as “you can take them anywhere” and “you can hold
anything on them”. He was a super
witty kid. He even held the door
for us when we got to Antwerp, and told us how beautiful the Antwerp train
station was, and could have told
us about just about anywhere in the world.
So we got to Antwerp and had one whole hour to
spend in Belgium, before catching our train to Paris. So we marveled at the massive old building that is Antwerp
Central Station, and then strolled (albeit hastily and efficiently) down the
first main street we found. I had
my first cup of coffee ever and it was apparently amazing (i found it aight)
and then we dashed off to Leonidus, the best chocolate shop in Antwerp, for
some authentic Belgian chocolate, which is fortunately not that expensive. It was some of the best chocolate I
have ever had it was SO good. So
then we had ten minutes before our train left and we made a beeline for the
station but were distracted by some Belgian waffles that had ice cream and
whipped cream and chocolate sauce and just everything that is good in the world
on top. So now we had about three
minutes to the train and those three minutes included alot of running with
heavy backpacks, which is a hilarious sight. We made the train, but not before burning all the calories
we had just consumed. We found Antwerp awesome, even if we only spent an hour
there.
So we continued on to Paris and had to switch
trains every couple hours, cuz we had decided to take the cheaper, but WAY
longer way there. At one point we
came to a station we weren’t scheduled to stop at, but the train came to a stop
and shut off. EVERYONE exited the
train. If it weren’t for Alice’s
inherent need to know exactly what is going on at all times, we would probably
still be sitting on that train, alone, wondering when we were going to start
moving. Turns out the car we were
in disconnected from the rest of the train so that it could be picked up by
another train and go somewhere else, and we had to move up to another car in
the train. This was a bit of a
panicky moment but we made it and made it all the way to Paris. In Paris, our hotel was right across
the street from the train station, which was in a dirtier part of the outer
parts of Paris, but we got a HOTEL instead of a hostel, so we really didn’t
care. The hotel seemed as though
it hadn’t really been used much in the last 200 years, and if you are going to
see a ghost somewhere, this is the place to be. The elevator could literally fit no more that two of us, and
im surprised it could lift us with all the luggage. It had a manual door, and was a bit of an antique. The room was in less than good
condition but there was a balcony and we were on the sixth floor so we had a
pretty awesome view of the grand old train station across the street and a
castle-like building in the distance.
The one outlet in the room meant we needed to periodically switch the
chargers between the two near-dead laptops and three cameras. Also the only way it would work out for
Alice’s camera was if it was plugged into a australia-canada adapter, then a
canada-europe adapter, then a european converter (sidenote from Alice: CLEARLY
this europe trip was slightly spontaneous.) We stayed up until 4:30 in the morning, half because we were
kinda jetlagged (can we still say that?) and half cuz we were writing part of
this blog (YOU'RE WELCOME).
In the morning we took took the train and found
the hostel we are staying in right now, and its a huge brand new building that
is way too nice to be a hostel.
Its raining today and so far we have walked down the street and gotten a
french style pita or something from a little deli. Tonight we are going to see the Eiffel tower and find the 26
beers for 10 euro (which is like 14 dollars) deal that a hosteler just told us
about. Let me know if these are
too long or too boring or what you want to hear cuz I really never know. I’ll keep ya posted,
Neil,
Alice, Kendra (the Trynamic Trio)
