Back in the Bay

I bet you thought you you'd be done with me. This is the last one, I promise.

I've been back in the Golden State for almost two weeks now and it's been just that--golden. I had a wonderful five months abroad in Europe. I experienced many different cultures and foods, practiced my French a good deal, and have made friendships I've brought back with me to the United States. I wouldn't trade the last five months for anything.

While I was traveling, I talked to many of my friends who had previously studied abroad and they warned me about how difficult assimilating back to their American lives was for them. And while I loved my time in Europe, I didn't see that happening to me. Do I miss Bordeaux? Yes. Do I want to go back to France in the near future? Yes. Do I feel like a stranger in San Francisco? NO.

I am back in San Francisco for the summer, interning for Dodge & Cox in the Bank of America building. I can see the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bay Bridge out the window of my office on the 39th floor, and while they aren't the Eiffel Tower, the view is still pretty great. And while I miss the Bordeaux wines, the chocolatines, and the fromage, I am happy to be back in the land of burritos, avocados, and acai bowls.

Dr. Seuss was right, oh the places I went. But even better is the place I came home to. I'll be back for France someday, but for now, I'm enjoying the city by the bay.

Au revoir!

Fin

Arrivederci, Italia

From Rome, Zoe and I made our way back to Florence by train to spend a couple of our last nights with her host family. And let me pause here to tell you her host family is absolutely amazing. Debora and Eugenio are so typically Italian it's awesome. They set out breakfast for us each morning, made sure we had dinner at night, and Eugenio even drove us to the train station two mornings during our stay when we were making our day trips to Cinque Terre and Venice. Eugenio speaks really good French so it was nice for me to be able to talk to him. One time during dinner he and I were in deep conversation, he looks over to Zoe to bring her into our conversation and she looks at him exasperated and says, "I don't speak French!" Speaking to me in French, he had forgotten to switch back to Italian to speak to her! They were a wonderful host family, both to me and Zoe.

We got in to Florence on Friday night. We had dinner with Debora and Eugenio and the next day we took a day trip to Cinque Terre and visited two of the five cities--Vernazza and Riomaggiore. It took us about two hours to get there from Florence. Each of these cities is very small, with Vernazza being the biggest and most popular, which is where we started. These cities are right on the coast and when we got off the train we made our way down to the ocean. At noon while Zoe and I were eating our lunch along the coast, ferry boat after ferry boat came to the docks, offloading hundreds of tourists onto this little city, overloading it! It made you wonder where the locals were, if they had evacuated the town at the beginning of tourist season and we're going to come back in a couple months once everyone was gone. 

Vernazza

Such tourism

The cool thing to do between these cities is hike the trail that runs between them. This can take a couple days and as Zoe and I had only a few hours before we had to head back to Florence, we hiked only as far as we could go without entering the national park. Before leaving Vernazza, we bought some obligatory gelato and then made a quick stop to Riomaggiore before heading home. 

Sunday took us to another Italian city, this time to Venice. We hopped back on the train at Firenze Santa Maria Novella Station and in two hours we were in Venezia. Venice was yet another Italian town crawling with tourists. Zoe had been to Venice before years ago with her family but I'd never been there and was amazed by all of the water surrounding the city! The canals are amazing, similar to the canals we saw in Amsterdam, and yet so different. We walked around the city all day, popping into stores selling Murano glass and trying not to buy everything! 

Loving these canals

We visited St. Mark's Cathedral and square which were really pretty. The only thing we didn't get to do in Venice was go on a gondola ride. This was something I really wanted to do but it was 80 Euros for a half an hour gondola ride and we just couldn't justify that to ourselves. Next time I visit it is a must!

St. Mark's Cathedral and square

Today was Zoe's and my final day in Florence. We had a couple things we had to get done like last-minute gift purchasing and plane ticket printing, but other than that we had a relaxing day. We visited the baptistry and had purchased tickets to walk up the Duomo but an hour into the line, we realized we just didn't have time to do it all today, so that is another thing on my to-do list when I am back in Italy! We did, oddly enough, have time to fit in paninis at All'Antico Venaio, the best panini shop in Florence, and of course there is always time for a gelato run.

And with that, Zoe and I had to part ways. She is headed back to the states tomorrow and I am spending the night in Pisa before flying to Paris tomorrow morning. She and I visited a total of 10 cities in 24 days in 6 countries. We did our best to tackle as much of Europe as we could, and our crazy May adventure was a success by all accounts! 

Walked by the Leaning Tower tonight!

"Selfie-stick, 5 Euro"

Rome, Italy: the land of the selfie-stick vendors and continuously running public water fountains.

Last Sunday, Zoe and I flew from Prague to Rome, where we were to spend the next five nights at an airbnb right across the street from St. Peter’s Basilica. Zoe was ecstatic to be headed back to her Italians and I was happy to staying put for a couple days. When we got off the plane at Rome Fiumicino, however, we began to run into some problems. We took a bus from the airport to that was supposed to take us to the Vatican. It’s true, the bus did pass the Basilica, but then it kept on moving right past it, eventually stopping a ways away from where we needed to be. We got off the bus, preparing for the long trek ahead in the 90-degree heat. Zoe had pulled up directions to our place from the Internet because the directions the airbnb woman had given were far from clear. We walked and walked and walked, Zoe with her backpacking backpack, and me dragging a rolley carry-on and a duffel bag. After a while, we started to head into a neighborhood that didn’t look like the one we should be staying in. Zoe whipped out her Italian and asked someone for directions and he pointed us in the wrong one. A couple blocks later Zoe went into a hotel, got a map and some better directions, and we were off. We made it to the pizza parlor where we were to pick up our keys, headed two houses over, and followed directions to the third floor, door on the right. Zoe put the keys in but the lock wouldn’t budge. We tried every door in that apartment to no avail. Zoe went back to the pizza guy to see if maybe we had the wrong keys but we apparently didn’t. Frustrated, hot, and tired, we tried to call the airbnb woman but she didn’t answer. So we lugged our stuff back down to the pizza parlor, had lunch, and waited for the airbnb woman to call us back. Half an hour later she did, with the helpful Italian advice, “I don’t understand, keep trying.” We went back up stairs, fiddled with some more keys, and eventually I realized the keys worked on the door on the left, not the right, like she had told us. We opened the door into our airbnb exhausted, and ready for a nap.

St. Peter's Basilica from our first airbnb's bathroom window

We didn’t get our nap. Five minutes after entering our airbnb we had come to the conclusion that 1) our toilet did not flush properly and 2) we had no wifi. Normally not having wifi wouldn’t be that big of a problem, but Zoe and I were planning on meeting a couple friends during our stay in Rome and without wifi we would have no way to contact them. Also, during our stay, we both had our pass times to sign up for UCSB classes in the fall. And, we were also going to be in Rome for a long time compared to our last couple cities. Wifi and a functioning toilet were a must. So we found a gelateria where we were able to log into wifi and went to work. Zoe got in touch with both the airbnb woman in Italian and the airbnb company in the US to explain our situation and get approval to cancel our reservation and receive a refund. Meanwhile I was looking up other available places we could move in to the next day. An hour later, we had everything figured out and were ready to put the shaky start to Rome behind us. We walked from the gelateria to the front of the Vatican, down the Tiber River to Castel Sant’Angelo and then found a trattoria for dinner.

Monday morning we were up bright and early for our tour of the Coliseum and Roman Forum. Monday was just as hot as the day before and 15 minutes into our 3-hour tour, our group was already seeking shake. Our guided tour of the Coliseum, while hot, was really interesting and we had a very excitable and cute middle-aged Italian woman tour guide. The second half of the tour, the part where we were in the Roman Forum was particularly interesting and full of history. Had we explored it without a tour guide to explain the particular ruins and their historical purposes, it wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive.

Inside the Coliseum

Stacey in front of the Coliseum

Roman Forum ruins

That evening, we gathered our belongings from our airbnb and traveled an hour to the other side of the city to our new, wifi connected, airbnb. While it was farther out from where we wanted to be, it was accessible enough by the metro and, more importantly, allowed me to sign up for my classes that night. After I registered for classes, Zoe and I met up with one of her friends from her Florence program for dinner near the Coliseum.

Tuesday morning we were again up bright and early for a tour, this time for a tour of the Vatican. The best part about having preordered tickets for a guided tour before we arrived in Rome is that we didn’t have to wait in the massive line that wrapped around the Vatican—we walked right in. Our tour guide, Barbara, was unfortunately not as captivating, or as easygoing, as our Coliseum guide. Our tour got off to a rough start when Barbara got testy with one of the other tour guides when she discovered that two ladies from our group had latched onto another tour guide’s group. He apparently didn’t show her appropriate concern over the two rebel tourists and she didn’t take kindly to his attitude, calling the front desk to complain about his comportment. Then she spent the next 20 minutes counting and recounting our group to make sure she had all the proper members. It was beginning to feel like we were back in kindergarten.

Barbara: crazy Vatican tour guide

The first two hours of our tour were dedicated to the Vatican Museum but the information Barbara gave us seemed unimportant, and moreover, uninteresting. All we really wanted to see was the Sistine Chapel and the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. It was unfortunate we had to listen to Barbara for over two and a half hours before we finally reached the Sistine Chapel, and then after only a few minutes, were quickly herded out like sheep. From there we entered St. Peter’s Basilica and it was amazing. It is so large, and decorated with statues and paintings that are gigantic.

St. Peter's Basilica steps

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

After enduring three and a half hours with Barbara, Zoe and I needed a break so we got lunch and relaxed until we were to meet up with Simone, my friend from Bordeaux, who also happened to be staying in Rome. We got drinks, had a nice dinner, and followed dinner up with gelato before heading home for the night. The Roman metro system really pales in comparison to the other metro system’s we’ve experienced the past couple of weeks (and even Bordeaux’s) and it took us over an hour to get home.

Wednesday provided no rest for the weary and Zoe and I were back at the Vatican to hear Pope Francis give his weekly Wednesday speech and blessing. We got to the Vatican around 9:30, just before Pope Francis made his tour of the square in his “Pope-mobile”. Zoe and I were far from the front of the St. Peter steps, but Pope Francis made it all the way back to where we were and passed about 10 feet in front of us in his little car! We were very excited, and also a little concerned by the hoards of parents raising their newborns into the air, in hopes that Pope Francis would reach out and bless them. It was a scene resembling that of The Lion King, when Rafiki holds Simba out over Pride Rock for the entire animal kingdom to praise. I was just waiting for someone to drop a baby.

Papa Francesco on the Pope-mobile!

The homies: Swiss Guard

Gathered in front of the Vatican for Papa Francesco

After listening to Pope Francis speak about the importance of parents educating their children at home and not leaving teaching to the education systems, Zoe and I embarked on some sightseeing. We hopped on the metro to the Trevi Fountain. Unfortunately, the Trevi Fountain is under construction until October, so much of the stone was covered in scaffolding and there was no water running.  From there we walked to the Pantheon, and strolled inside, admiring its altar and ceiling.

  

Trevi Fountain and scaffolding

Wednesday night we had more dinner plans, this time with Margaretta and Doug Page, friends who live a couple blocks from us on 8^th Avenue in San Francisco! Margaretta and Doug were in Rome celebrating their 25^th wedding anniversary and we just happened to be in Rome at the same time. We met them for dinner near the Spanish Steps and it was great to see familiar faces from home. After dinner we hunted down the gelateria Come il Latte, which they had found highlighted in the New York Time’s 36 Hours section on Rome. It took some good map reading to find, but it was well worth it!  Best gelato we had in Rome, made even better by the dark chocolate lining of the inside of the cone. It was so fun to see Margaretta and Doug, but when we parted ways it made me all the more anxious to get back to San Francisco! We exchanged travel stories and for me it was really amusing listening to them talk about all the things they’d seen in the past week. Talking to Zoe later, we could really see how all our traveling was beginning to wear us down because as Margaretta and Doug were naming all the things they’d seen and wanted to still see in Rome, Zoe and I just wanted to relax.

View from atop Spanish Steps

On the Spanish Steps

Thursday finally allowed Zoe and I to sleep in. We got up around 10:30 and forced ourselves to go on a run. Even with all of the walking we’ve been doing in the past couple weeks, all the good food we’ve been surrounded by is beginning to show! We took the metro to the Coliseum and ran from the Coliseum to river, a ways down the river, and then back. We made lunch at our airbnb and hung out for most of the afternoon at our airbnb, feeling a little guilty for not going to see more things in the city, but at the same time exhausted from so much traveling for so long, that relaxing was a nice reprieve. That night I met up with Simone for drinks at a really cool bar in the Trastevere neighborhood on the other side of the river from our airbnb. What is really cool about these Italian bars is that instead of happy hour (or sometimes in addition to), they have apertivo, which when you buy a drink, allows you access to a buffet of varying hors d’oeuvres. At this bar, they had lots of different apertivo options, from saffron rice to couscous, to baked cinnamon apple slices. It was a great last night in Rome.

That brings us to today, Friday, May 22. Zoe and I are on a train headed to Florence, back to Zoe’s host family actually. We are staying with them for the next three nights. But while we are staying in Florence, two of the days we will be there we will be taking day trips—one to Cinque Terre, and one to Venice. Zoe is leaving Florence to head back to Sacramento May 26^th, and I’m leaving the 27^th from Paris. We are really getting close to the end of our travels, but we are still packing in as much as we can (maybe even too much!) into our last few days.  

Praha, Czech Republic

The traveling continues. After our brief jaunt to Berlin, Zoe and I had an even shorter stay in Prague. Seeing so many cities in such a short time was beginning to wear us down and it's hard to see everything we want to, but we are determined to try our best!

On Friday we took a five hour train ride from Berlin to Prague, and it was beautiful. The German and Czech countrysides were so pretty! When we made it the Prague train station the first thing we needed to do was exchange some money from Euros to Czech Koruna. And what a shock that was. I handed in 50 Euros and was give 1,160 Koruna! I couldn't get over the fact that they had 1,000 Koruna bills! 1 Koruna is about 23 Euros, or 26 dollars. We purchased metro tickets to get to our airbnb for 24 Koruna, and I then realized while I was accustomed to thinking that 1,160 of a currency was a lot of money, it would be gone in no time. 

Our airbnb lady, Claudia, was a really cute older Czech woman. She gave us great directions to her flat from the train station and then once we met her, gave us a good recommendation for a traditional Czech dinner at a pub a couple blocks away. When we entered, we asked if they had an English menu. A real tough looking Czech woman just looked at us and tried to converse with us in Czech. But then the cook came out to us and in rough English asked us, "You want Czech food or steak?" Czech food was what we wanted and that is what we got. I had gulash, which is a type of meat stew with potatoes and dumplings. Zoe had ham and potatoes and cabbage. Accompanied by some Pilsner Urquel. It was great and I was already wishing we had more than a day and a half to devote to Prague. 

After dinner we took the metro to Old Town to check it out. There we saw the Old Town clock tower and town square. It was packed with people hanging out, eating dinner, and watching the many street performers dotting the square. It was a beautiful evening, and the sunset over the clock tower was enchanting.

Old Town Clock Tower

Street performers in Old Town

Paragliders in the sky!

Old Town Sunset

Saturday morning, we woke up to breakfast laid out for us by lovely Claudia. We had cereal, croissants, and fruit. After breakfast, we got back on the metro and headed across the river to explore more of Prague. We took the 22 about as far as it would go, taking us to Prague churches and overlooks of the city. Throughout the day, we meandered slowly back down towards the river, stopping to admire things along the way. We walked around Prague Castle and went inside Prague Cathedral, a gothic-style church that reminded me a lot of Notre Dame in Paris.

Prague skyline

Prague Cathedral

We lunched in a restaurant near the river and the Charles Bridge. Still enamored by my Czech dinner the night before, I ordered gulash again and made the right choice. My meal came to 350 Koruna! I told you it was going to be easy to blow through 1,160 Koruna! Even on our second day of Prague I couldn't wrap my head around the strange currency! After lunch we visited the John Lennon wall and walked back across the Charles Bridge to Old Town. 

In front of the John Lennon Wall 

View from Charles Bridge

Across the river

When we made it to the Old Town square around 2:45, we were surrounded by people in Czech sports jerseys, wild hats and costumes, and many painted faces. It turns out, at 3:15 Czech was playing Canada in ice hockey for some sort of world championships. The town square was packed with people, a stage that was blasting music, and a couple megatrons from which people could watch the game live. It was awesome. My knowledge of ice hockey includes the one San Jose Sharks game I went to years ago and every four years when the winter Olympics are on. Oh yeah, and that there's a guy named Crosby on Canada who I think is pretty good. With that, Zoe and I stayed for the first period and cheered with all the crazy Czech people! It sort of made up for the fact that I've missed all of the NBA playoffs. 

And with that, our time in Prague is over! It was really an amazing city, and gorgeous. I didn't know much about Prague before I arrived, and what I know now is that I need to go back ASAP. Off to Rome we go! Looking forward to staying in one place for a couple days, but wondering where the time has gone. The countdown to San Francisco is 10 days!

"Ich Bin ein Berliner"

After our 48 hours in Amsterdam, we spent our next 48 hours in Berlin, Germany. Thankfully, we took a quick flight instead of another overnight bus. My bussing days are over. 

We arrived in Germany around noon on Wednesday and headed to our airbnb located in the “hipster” district of Kreuzberg. Walking the few blocks from the metro station to our apartment, we passed by Turkish restaurants, fruit stands, Thai restaurants, waffle houses, and many other types of ethnic foods. What struck me the most was the amount of graffiti on buildings, even on our apartment building, but throughout the next two days, I got the sense that there weren’t many public spaces in Berlin free of graffiti.

After dropping off our things and meeting our host, we got on the metro and headed towards central Berlin. Before arriving in Berlin, Zoe and I had been given various recommendations by friends of places to go and things to see in Berlin. I had been told to check out a particular biergarten near Alexanderplatz, so that’s where we headed for lunch.  This biergarten was called Hofbräu München and it was the most German thing I’d ever seen. Since it was my first time in Germany, I realize that’s not saying much, but I will say it was a great introduction to Germany. Not knowing much about beer, I told the waiter I’d have half a pint of whatever was the most typical German beer on the menu. I don’t remember what kind it was, but it was actually pretty good!

While we were waiting for our food to come, two large German men came over to Zoe and me speaking rapid German. When we told them, “Sorry, we don’t speak German,” they happily switched over to English and replied, “That’s no problem, we speak English!” They then explained that the two of them, along with the six other guys at their table, were in the middle of a bachelor party, and one of the guys talking to us was getting married on Friday. He needed a dance partner for the next part of his bachelor party and was wondering if either of us would help him out for a couple seconds on the dance floor. My sense of rhythm is underwhelming at best, but Zoe and I were the only two young girls at the biergarten and Zoe was not having it. So I reluctantly volunteered and followed this German to the dance floor. There was a live German band playing on stage, a man on the drums, a man playing the accordion, and one on the piano. My dance partner was shackled, had a helmet on his head, and a pint of beer duct taped to his hand. Thankfully we entered the dance floor mid song and I only had to dance until the end of the song before I was allowed to sit back down. He was a friendly German, and I wished him all the best before going back to my lunch of meatloaf, a fried egg, and potato salad. Germany provided the warmest of welcomes to me.

The Hofbräu biergarten

On the dance floor

Still struck by the bachelor party and a little overwhelmed by the fact that that morning we had been in Amsterdam and we were now in Berlin, Zoe and I walked around Alexanderplatz, exploring the TV tower, the Berliner Dome, and the National Gallery. During our self-guided tour of the central city, Zoe and I were approached by a women who asked us if we would be interested in being part of a video she and her crew were filming for Heineken, pointing to a little old-fashioned Heineken car and her film crew down the street. Shocked, we agreed and waited while she called her producer. Five minutes later she came back to us very apologetic and said unfortunately her producer was looking for people who looked a little more “foreign” for the video. Coming all the way from California, Zoe and I were probably the most foreign people she would meet that day but that wasn’t the point. Our blonde hair and blue eyes just wouldn’t permit us to be foreign enough. Talk about racial profiling. We said no problem, still confused as to what was happening to us during our first couple hours in Berlin, but made her take a picture of us in front of the little Heineken car before we walked away! Tired from our early start to the day, Zoe and I headed to the Turkish restaurant in our neighborhood for an early dinner and then called it a night.

Berliner Dome

Heineken models

The next morning we headed to see some of the more historical sights of Berlin. We took the metro to the Berlin Wall Memorial and brushed up on our German history. The metro stop dropped us at Bernauer Strabe, the street where the Berlin Wall had been erected some 50 years ago. There were polls lined up down the street, providing markers for where the Wall had been and further down the street in front of the Berlin Wall Memorial, remnants of the Wall were still in tact. It was pretty amazing to read about and watch videos about the effects the Wall had on East Berlin and West Berlin and it’s crazy to think that the Wall came down only shortly before I was born. It’s hard to imagine something like that really happening, and only a short time ago.

View from above the Berlin Wall Memorial

Parts of the Berlin Wall still erect

From there, we continued on to Reichstag, the German parliament building, and then onto the Tiergarten and Brandenburg Gate. Berlin is amazing in terms of how much history took place there, and how recently things took place. More concerning is the fact that most of what happened in Berlin caused great destruction. I don’t know how Berliners are able to justify some of this history that took place in their city, but I guess every country has history they would like to rewrite. It just seems to me that Berlin has a particularly large and gruesome amount.

Brandenburg Gate

We visited Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, which was really interesting and at the same time hard to fully comprehend. The memorial itself is above ground and really pretty, a maze of erected stone, and underground there is a museum detailing individual lives and accounts of the Holocaust. There is no shortage of history lessons in Berlin. We continued on to Checkpoint Charlie and took a photo with a couple of “American soldiers” who were stationed at the base for 4 Euros. This we had to do to make up for the photo we had taken earlier with a couple of Soviets brandishing the German flag, also for 4 Euros.

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial

Our American comrades

For dinner, by way of another recommendation, we were in search for Mustafa’s, a well-known food stand serving the “best Dürüm in Berlin”. For this, stood in line on the sidewalk for 2 hours in 20 minutes. 15 minutes in, the woman behind us starts talking to us in German. Understanding our blank stares she says, “Oh! You girls speak English!” And with that, the next two hours went by in constant chatter. It turns out this woman worked in the fashion industry in Munich and was in Berlin for the long weekend. She was originally from the Caribbean and English was her first language, but she had moved to Munich 15 years ago to study and never left. She told us she had been to Mustafa’s once before, told us the Dürüm was well worth the wait, and what we had to order. After two hours we were sad to part ways but so happy to finally get our food and take it back to our apartment. And even though this was the first time I’d ever eaten Dürüm in Germany, I do have to agree it was the best!

And with that, our stay in Berlin is over. This morning Zoe and I had breakfast at the café right next to our airbnb and then we headed to the Berlin train station. We are now sitting on a train that is taking us to Prague, where we will be spending the next two nights. It’s about a five-hour train ride, and we are about two hours in, passing through Dresden. The German countryside passing out my window is lovely. Fields and fields of green grass and trees, with houses and small towns cropping up intermittently. Reminds me of my Amtrak rides from San Francisco to Santa Barbara-NOT!

Berlin was a really cool city, with all of its history, good and bad, but I feel like I barely scratched the surface of the city. I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I had more time there. Unlike Amsterdam, Berlin cannot be conquered in 48 hours. I guess it just means I’ll have to come back sometime!

Taking a picture with part of the Berlin Wall

Catch ya later Berlin

Planet: Amsterdam

To sum up my Amsterdam experience in one word: otherworldly.

Our very friendly (not) and expressive (not at all) bus driver stopped our overnight bus from Paris to Amsterdam at 5:55am in a parking lot next to a large metro station. Unsure what to make of his garbled speech over the intercom before he exited the bus, Zoe and I got off the bus and asked him if this was our stop. "Last stop. Amsterdam. This is it." What a cheerful response. And with that, and the 45 mins of sleep I got on the bus, we trudged to a map. Because although the bus driver told us this was Amsterdam, this definitely was not Amsterdam. Where we were was anyone's guess.

The fifteen people who got off the bus with us were just as confused as to our whereabouts. We huddled in the cold in front of large maps outside of the metro station, trying to figure out where we were and how to get where we wanted to go. I asked the tall eastern European looking man next to me if he knew where we were on the map. His response: No. But I think this is a very large map. My response: Thanks man, I figured that much as it includes Paris on it. Lovely. Another two women came up to Zoe and I as we were trying to figure out how to purchase tickets to Amsterdam Centraal Station if we knew which machine to use. Gotta hand it to us though, we were the first ones to figure it out and we wasted no time in leaving those people behind. We managed to find our way to Amsterdam Centraal and then to our airbnb by 7:30am. Thankfully our host was ready to welcome us to his apartment. We said hello, napped until 11, and then were off to explore Amsterdam!

Amsterdam Centraal

It had been a while since we had eaten, so the first thing we were in search of was food. We found a cute lunch restaurant where we sat along one of Amsterdam's many canals. Determined to try some Dutch food, I picked a sandwich on the menu that had in parentheses "very Dutch" next to it. No kidding, the menu really said that, but it didn't exactly say what was in the sandwich. So before immediately ordering it, I asked the waiter what it was, what "very Dutch" meant. He looked at me and said, "I have no clue, I am not Dutch, I don't even speak Dutch. I am Portuguese. I speak Portuguese, Spanish, and English. I figure that is enough." Well, alright. And with that, I ordered the sandwich anyways. It ended up being pretty good too, a ham and cheese sandwich with sliced egg and some sort of Dutch sauce on it.

After lunch, Zoe and I headed back to the city center and took a tour of Amsterdam's many canals by boat! It was by far my favorite thing we did during our short stay. The canals are lovely, the weather was nice and sunny, and the houses and buildings that are right up against the canals are amazing. They are colorful, very distinct in their style, and made me ready to lease one then and there. After the tour, Zoe and I continued to explore Amsterdam on foot. Our airbnb host had told us that morning that Amsterdam is the most "cultured" city in the world, meaning that there are the most nationalities represented by its inhabitants. I can't attest to the veracity of that statement, however it did seem to ring true just based on the different shops and restaurants we walked passed. There was everything from Spanish tapas bars to Thai food places to Vietnamese noodle bars. Plus there was also that Portuguese waiter.

Amsterdam canals

My new houseboat

Later that night Zoe and I met up with two of Zoe's friends from her program in Florence who were also spending a couple days in Amsterdam. Their airbnb host had suggested we take the ferry across the water to northern Amsterdam for dinner. So we took that ferry, found no good food, and took it right back. Instead we took the metro over to their neighborhood, Jordaan, and found a nice restaurant with a cute Dutch waiter, much more helpful than the Portuguese one from earlier. He spoke English with an Australian accent and when we asked him about it he said, "I have no idea where it is from, but I am full Dutch." At the end of dinner, we asked him where we should go for dessert. There are a lot of waffle places around Amsterdam but he quickly corrected us, telling us the waffles, while sold in Amsterdam, were actually Belgium, and that was not the way to go. Instead he wrote down some not so precise directions to Winkel, a shop that had "the best Dutch apple pie in Amsterdam." This place, he said, made apple pie the way his grandmother used to make it. Did I mention how cute this Dutch boy was?

Thanks to Google maps (and not the directions this Dutch boy had written on back of a beer coaster), we found Winkel. I told the man who greeted us that we were here about some apple pie and he told us to take a seat. The Dutch boy was right, that apple pie was the best I'd ever had. Not an apple gratin like I would find in France, this apple pie was full of apple chunks and cinnamon dough, topped high with whipped cream. Good thing Zoe and I had a long walk back to our apartment that night to walk it off.

Because of our lack of sleep the night before, Zoe and I slept in late this morning. I went on a run around Rembrandt Park, the park right next to our airbnb. The parks here are all so green, with full lakes and canals running through them. It is crazy to think that at this moment, on the other side of the word, California is experiencing one of its worst droughts in history. Because based on the greenery here and the fountains and bodies of water aplenty over here, you would never know.

We left our apartment around noon, had a great big brunch, and then made our way over to the Rijksmuseum. We took our obligatory pictures in front of the museum and its tulip gardens, but we did not go inside. It was hard to justify spending 17 euros to enter when neither of us were particularly interested in it. From there we meandered about the city. We explored different neighborhoods, walked through the very impressive Vondelpark, and made it back to our apartment.

Rijksmuseum tulips

Rijksmuseum fountains are more fun than the museum 

We are Amsterdam

Vondelpark

On the whole, I really enjoyed Amsterdam. However, I am happy to be moving on to Berlin tomorrow. Amsterdam is so other that it feels as if you are living on a different planet! Not only is the language enough to make you feel like you're talking to aliens, the coffeeshops on every block filled with people smoking marijuana, a red light district full of women prostituting themselves in windows, and the hoards of people taking their motorboats down canals makes Amsterdam seem as if it is total paradise, it's too unreal!