Last few hours in Amsterdam

This morning was a lazy morning and I spent most of it reading. After eating some lunch I biked to Rachels school. It was a beautiful 40 minute ride that follows a canal and passes a goat farm and ends in a sweet little village called Amstelveen. The houses there are huge and with massive windows but somehow typically dutch. The entire route had a lane for a bicyle. Even though I don't start work for two weeks I still got that FEELING walking through the place. It is more or less circular with two stories. All of he rooms and common areas are geometric shapes and there are almost no right angles anywhere. I peeked into the chemistry rooms and saw that there are only about sixteen students in those senior classes (IB curriculum). Everything is neat and tidy. I've also traded emails with the chemistry teacher and it will be neat to compare notes. Who knows. I also spent te better part of an hour helping Rachel re-decorate the bulletin boards in the grade 4 common area. I don't even like doing the bulletin boards that I use at school because it takes so long and I'd usually rather be doing some other work but I didn't mind doing it for her. Must fix us classrooms at Haig...

We then bikes home and I'm waiting for pizza for dinner before I go to the airport.

Oh, did I mention that yesterday Dana and I found a book fair and what did I buy? A Jet Li movie and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. People who know me will probably not be so surprised. The entire description is in Dutch and I don't think the movie is Dutch but we will see...

Jewish Quarter and crowds

Last night Rachel and her friend Jennifer and I went to a party on Princesgraacht that was hosted by one of their colleagues. Jennifer taught in Tokyo for three years, then in Norway for four years and now she is in Amsterdam. We took the tram to her place. She owns this great place on the top floor of one of those Amsterdam houses. She lent me one of her extra bicyles and we bikes to the party together. It was crazy trying to navigate through amazing crowds on one of those clunky dutch bikes. Anyway, eventually we had to stop and lock up the bikes because there were too many people to get by. Last night there was this live musical performance on the canal and the canals was choked with boats and the streets were full of crowds watching the free show. We stayed at the party overlooking the music until 2am. Rachel and I then had to bike home and it was not until 3am that I got to sleep. But the experience of biking so late at night was really memorable. It's just what you have to do.

Luckily, I got up in time to meet Dana at the train station. We walked along the IJ for a while looking at some of the tall ships because this weekend is the tall ship festival (Sail 05) in Amsterdam. There were some great pirate ships and navy ships to look at. We then meandered our way down to the Jewish Quarter and had really good felafel at this kosher restaurant. We then went near but not into the Portuguese Synagogue. In retrospect I'm sorry that I didn't pay for us to go in because Dana read something that said that this is one of the most interesting and historical synagogues in the world. It is surrounded by a low brick wall and you would never know it was there. We even stood dubiously by the door until somebody saw us and buzzed us inside.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around and battling crowds in the downtown. We walked through the red light district again and I almost bought a parasol for 2.5 euro in a Chinese import store. I don't think it would travel well. I left Dana at the train station and returned to Rachel's.

The opium den

I am now safely back in Rachel's house in Amsterdam after being dropped in crazyland for a great 24 hours. After the internet cafe yesterday, Dana and I returned to the boat and I was left to myself for a few hours until the show started while they warmed up and got ready etc. The show is called "Vanishing Currents" but since the audience kept leaving before the show ended the cast has kept the name a review gave them calling the show the "trick of the vanishing audience".

When we got back, chairs were being dropped over the brick wall onto the beach and the crew were setting them up. Apparently they were expecting about 300 people because the entire evenings block of tickets was purchased by the contractor of the apartment building across the river and all of the tenants were invited for free and given free drinks! So I was reading and reserving seats for Rachel Pieter and Dana (she starts in the audience) and people started to come an hour and a half early! The were happy and friendly with each other and chatting happily and enjoying the beer. I couldn't help feeling weird for them because I didn't know if these same happy people who were here to enjoy free theatre would soon leave in confusion before the show ended! Anyway, Rachel and Pieter got there and found the boat with no problem (much to my amazement because the ship is on the Utrecht "beach" and it is off my map and looks like a bit of sand poured onto the edge of a dock area...with a little tiki bar...and you definitely wouldn't want to swim. Oh, and the beach washrooms were what all 20 of the crew were using because the toilet on the ship was full and had to be pumped out...sound familiar? anybody? anybody? mom?
Okay so the show started at 9pm. The refugees (actors) were seated in the audience and when their number was called they were hauled onto the set by another actress. The basic premise is that a United States sound-a-like has declared all of the people that we consider refugees to be terrorists and so they put them on this ship and were taking them...somewhere...The had a tower off of the ship with large TV screens set up where they had a mock CNN. The CNN was pretty funny actually. TERROR SHIP-exactly the kind of sensationalism that media does so well. The refugees were put into a container inside the boat. You could see into it because the walls were mesh. Good for the audience but unfortunatley not so good for pictures. There was this narrator charactor hanging from a circus hoop high up in the rigging and singing all kinds of neat poetry "-all aboard for the river Stix" and so on. Kind of like he narrator for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Each refugee had a story to tell through a combination of very nice monologues and chanting songs. One only danced and one only played instruments. Eventually, the refugees convinced the new first mate that they weren't terrorists but only trying to live their lives and that his country was the evil one...then there was a mutiny and they trapped the ships captain and crew (other than the first mate) inside the ship and took it over -that was when CNN called it a Terror Ship with possible weapons of mass destruction.

Then the plot sort of... went out the portal. Apparently they were approaching some dock and planning on putting on "some kind of performance"...?...so there was a huge build-up to this performance. When the performance started, it started with two "silks" performers. You know those acrobats who tumble down a big hanging piece of silk...well they did that. Only it was dark and they used black lights on their costumes. That was my first wtf moment. Then, there were 3 actors dressed in black light reflecting skeletons costumes doing some martial arts display with a staff. Then 2 dances were attached to rappelling cords and bouncing and spinning off the wall. More wtf. Then they all twirled fire on batons or ropes (supposed to represent them chasing away the army by making them think the ship was on fire? I don't know. Then they all celebrated that they had gotten away...and one of the actors came into the audience on STILTS trying to sell weapons...not real ones of course...and then someone asked him if he had any toys in his bag...and he took out something and started whirling it around. and then the cast started singing their final song about how art is the weapon of mass jubilation. No I'm not kidding. The end. Amazingly most of the audience stayed.

After that we showed Rachel and Pieter the boat and they drove home. Dana and two of the other actors and I went to a local coffee shop. Definitely Maroccan or Turkish. There were only men in there playing Bacci and smoking. We stayed there for about an hour and then returned to the boat. Dana kindly offered me her bed and was going to sleep into the salon. She sleeps on the bottom of three bunks in a room smaller than my bathroom. as I was lying down I wondered when the last time she had washed these sheets was...and then I wondered if my hepatitis B immunization was up to date (Sorry Dana). Fell asleep only to be woken up again when Dana's roommates came back from the disco and then again when Dana gave up on sleeping in the salon. I call the salon the opium den because it is richly decorated with rugs and cushions.

Yesterday morining we got up and took the train back to Amsterdam and met Dana's friend Laura at the train station. We went out for pancakes. They are like crepes only unfolded and topped with much more stuff. Too much food for one person really but live and learn. I had one with peaches and vanilla ice cream, cherry liqueur and whipped cream.

We then went to the Anne Frank Museum and waited for 30 minutes and got in just as it started to rain. There is no furniture in the rooms at the request of Otto Frank but you can still see the pin-ups of movie stars and other pictures on the walls of Anne's room. That is pretty surreal. Original old photos of Ginger Rogers and children picking flowers. Most of the staircase is not accessible to the public but we were able to climb through the book case door and up the stairs into the annex. There was some looping footage of Miep (one of the helpers) describe the day that Otto Frank asked her to help hide his family, and a woman who was in Bergen Belsen with Anne but she was in a section that was for non-Jewish prisoners and she describes throwing food over the wall to Anne...I had never heard that story before. The museum is small and really only served to tell that one story. If you want a museum about the Holocaust, go to Yad Vashem.

In sharp juxtaposition to this, we then walked through the red light district. Now when I said a city is a city...that no longer applies. There are people-sized windows and the women are right on the other side of the glass in their lingerie beckoning to the men walking through the narrow cobblestoned streets. And it didn't feel sleazy despite the nature of the area. We then accidentally found Chinatown which is really just the typical Amsterdam buildings with Chinese signs. Kind of cool. I feel like that part of the city had a lot of character then you can'tget elsewhere so I hope to get a chance to explore that a bit more tomorrow when I meet Dana again.

Today we got up late and helped packed their place up a bit. I then explored the closest dike and river system. There are two kinds of ducks and even herons that live here. Pretty interesting. Anyway, I don't want to be rude any longer because Rachel's friend Jennifer is here and tonight we are going to a party. So I'm going to go and help pack.

In Utrecht

This morning I got up really early and made my way to the Central train station in Amsterdam. It took about 45 minutes on the tram! Rachel told me that the people in the trams stamping tickets sometimes misunderstand her because the word for 2 sounds like the word for 3 and sure enough, the man stamped three zones on my stripenkaart instead of 2.

I arrived in Utrecht via a not-so-interesting route. Utrecht is surrounded by industrial areas so unfortunately there wasn't anything very interesting to look at out the window. Dana met me at the station and together we walked to the boat. The boat is outside of the main touristy section of town and I would have never found it without her. It is a tall ship but the sail was bound and the set covered most of the deck so it isn't much to look at most of the time. Inside the galley, it's actually really nice. Beautifully finished wood everywhere and lush cushions...all covered in the remnants of last night's "wine and cheese" party. It was pretty funny. People were waking up just as I was getting there so everybody I met was in the same state of tired and out of it. :)

Today we explored Utrecht. We ate a picnic lunch in a nice shady square near the Domkerk-the oldest church in Europe! Unfortuntely a large portion of the church collapsed when a tornado hit the area in the 1600s but the tower is still standing and is so gothic it's great. It's nice to see a true gothic church after seeing so many Baroque churches in central europe. We paid 7 euros and took a guided tour up the tower. The tower is over 450 steps high or so and it was pretty cool. Very narrow winding staircase that got more and more narrow the closer we got to the top. From the top we could see for miles in every direction and the sky was clear but a little hazy. Very cool. Utrecht central itself is a very typical small european town with a central square and church and with lots of winding little cobblestoned streets. Bicycles fly by and it's hard to stay out of their way because the pedestrian walkway areas are often covered with parked bikes or with patio tables. But so far everyone has been very polite and I'm having a good time. The pace is much slower and more likeable than the grimy big city.

We then walked around town for a bit and had a beer with lemon at canal level and rested our legs for about an hour. We then explored some of the cloisters that are surrounding the church area. They are all lovely with pretty little gardens. Now we are walking back to the boat and have stopped at this Maroccan (I guess?) internet cafe/coffe shop...? I'll see the show tonight.

Zandvoort and beyond

We started nice and late to day and met a Gijs, a friend of Pieter's for coffee. The coffee shop was nothing special but the area of Amsterdam was just west of the downtown so it still had a lot of Amsterdam character (tall buildings) but none of the crowds.
Rachel Pieter and I then took a train first to Haarlem and then on to Zandvoort. Zandvoort is on the coast and is actually a huge beach resort town. I understand that real estate is worth a fortune there. The beach is all pristine sand and it stretches on as far as the eye can see in either direction. The weather today was just beautiful and I think that it is probably the nicest weather the Netherlands has seen this summer. It was totally packed with people despite it being Wednesday. And I mean lots of and lots of people. There were lawn chairs and wind shelters set up and they occured in waves of differenct colours as different companies sponsored different sections of the beach. So there would be a sea of pink (Ola ice cream) and then blue...and so on. People were just lying out and baking in the sun! There were resaurants and bars where you could get a snack and a few kid rides like the beach in Huntstanton in England only this was much, much more on a grand scale. We sat and read on the beach for a while and then sat and had a beer at one of the restaurants called No Name Bar (I'm not kidding).

We then walked to the edge of town and walked on these sand dunes for a while. The ground is sand and there is a fine layer of grass and shrub that grow. It is kind of rolling landscape and protected because it is fragile. That was very very relaxing. We saw some wild bulls and some birds of prey flying around. People of the town also have these little plots of land where they have a little shed and a garden because they don't have gardens in town. These little gardens are protected by barbed wire fences. Apparently this is very common in Holland!

We ate dinner at a place in town and I tried not to think about what 20 euros means :). We then took the train, then the metro and then the street car back into town. The train from Haarlem to Amsterdam was so packed with people that it felt like Toronto in rush hour! Apparently this is not the norm but one of the cars had a problem with it's wiring or something like that. Anyway, a very squished and hot fifteen minutes.

Shopping in Amsterdam

Today Rachel and bicycled into Amsterdam and walked around doing some shopping. It was really reat to bike into town. I borrowed Rachel's bike and she rode Pieter's. Rachel is quite a bit taller than me so we discovered that we needed to lower the seat a bit to prevent me from falling on my face. Her bike has backpedal breaks! I haven't been on a bike like that since I was 6 or 7. Only one gear on this bike and this big touring handle bars. There are all kinds of rules about cycling here. There are separate lanes everywhere and each bike lane has its own set of lights at intersections. The light is a little bicyle shape that is either red or green. So it was a pleasant little 30 minute tour into town. We got into Amsterdam by going through this park near the south-west edge of the downtown core called Vondelpark. This park is just mostly grassy with trees and big broad paved paths as well as more narrow dirt paths weaving through it. It was a nice way to come into the city.

We parked our bikes at the edge of the park and walked into town. Right away, I saw the combination of canals and tall buildings that you always see in photographs and paintings of Amsterdam and are always hearing about. We spent hours wandering around the western section of the downtown core and did a lot of window shopping (of course this is one of my favorite ways to spend my time and just get a feel for the place). I looked into a shop selling Delftware and saw lots of tulips; both the fresh kind and the brightly painted wooden kind were everywhere. I think I'll buy a bunch of wooden ones as a souvenir. There are large streets as well as more narrow little winding streets all wit interesting sights and shops. We ate lunch at this great pizza place right next to the Palace. Not only was it great pizza, but I think the owners were sephardic jews because there was some judaica on display in a case behind the bar!!! Kind of surprising and pretty cool and it just added to the experience. The city and shopping areas were chocked with people and by 4:30 we were tired and headed back home. Ending the day with a relaxing bike ride back to Rachel's place was a great way to finish off my first day in Holland.

Rachel lives above a series of practical stores including a post office and a grocery store and so we bought some food for dinner and then I bought one of those transit cards called a strippenkaart. Tomorrow Rachel and I will take the train to Zandvoort. Zandvoort is in Noord-Holland and is a short train ride from Amsterdam. I'm looking forward to exploring the beach and walking a bit along the dunes. Someday I'll have to come back and have a proper tour of the actual countryside.

Arrived in Amsterdam

Yesterday was a very long day of annoying travel from Cambridge to Amsterdam. I had to take the city bus into Cambridge and then sit on a National Express bus for two hours to get to Heathrow, take the train to terminal 4, and then check in. In Heathrow's defence, they are busy constructing terminal 5 and the bus station is also being renovated so this explains some of the chaos that I encountered when I first got here. I got to the airport so early that I was walking around for hours before I even found out where my gate was.

Rachel and Pieter are doing very very well. They have this great big place in a suburb of Amsterdam called Osdorp. Today we are going into town for a little shopping and sight-seeing. So I'll sign off now and write more later.

Cambrdige without kiddies

This morning Mark and Lindsay were up at 4am to get ready for a 5am departure for the airport and then Toronto. I got up with them to see them off but very quickly went back to bed.

I got into Cambridge and signed up for the 1:30pm walking tour of Cambridge. The tour was a good way to see Cambridge and get some important background information in a hurry. Really, it was pretty much a tour of the main sights of the colleges. It included a peek into the Cambridge Cavendish laboratory courtyard where all of these important discoveries have been made in science (such as the discovery of the electron and the Watson-Crick model of DNA). A memorably bit was the pub where Watson and Crick did most of their discussing and thinking. At Cambridge University you can't walk on the grass unless you are a senior fellow. Everyone has to stick to the paths. Pretty funny. The tour also included the interior of the King's College Chapel. This chapel is more beautiful and ornate than the one at Westminister Abbey. It was started by Henry VI and was not finished until the time of Henry VIII. You can see homages made to his various wives that help to date when a particular piece of wood or glass was commissioned.

After the tour I walked around by myself for a while and took some pictures and then went to the Eagle Pub (the Watson and Crick pub) and drank a couple of Guinesses and ate a sticky toffee pudding. That was pretty much all I wanted to accomplish today. The only thing to regret is that when I got home I dropped and broke one of the souvenir mugs that I bought. I bought two of the same ones intending one to be a gift so it isn't a catastrophe but still never fun.

Cambridge with kiddies

Yesterday Lindsay, the kids and I went into Cambridge for a little sight-seeing. We rode bicycles and I was surprised to find out that taking a bike is almost as fast as taking the bus. There is also a parking lot of bicycles where you can lock them up for free. We then walked for a while and they they took me through all of these cute little alleys and backways. Apprently, most of the bridges the go over the Cam river are owned by the colleges and you can't use them unless you pay to get into the college. But of course my wonderful tour guides took me over one of the only public bridges.

We then found a nice pub and sat outside right on the river and I was re-acquainted with the wonders of English cooking. Fa-bu-lous (ick...everthing picked and fried and flavoured with boring). But you couldn't beat the atmosphere. We then went punting, as this is the thing to do. Our tour guide's name was Frank and Frank deftly steered us around all of the amateurs screaming in all kinds of different languages as they tried to steer the lumbering rafts along the water. He also told us about the colleges as we sailed by. There are a variety of interesting bridges to go under including one designed by Newton called the mathematical bridge. Legend has it that initially it needed no bolts or supports of any kind but it was somehow destroyed. Another bridge has a section of a concrete ball chopped out of it. Frank had stories explaining these phenomena but I think that part of the job of being a punter is to come up with imaginative lies to tell the tourists. Whatever. It was a lie. But an entertaining lie. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is no.


Anyhoo, I returned to Cambridge this afternoon after a bried trip to the teeny tiny Histon Public Library. I spend a couple of hours in the Cambridge University Botanical Gardens. They were a nice way to spend a couple of hours. There is a greenhouse complex with interesting fragile plants from around the world. There is a miniature bamboo forest...not exactly Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon but still interesting for someone who has only see little bamboos chopped up into 8 inch sticks and put into water with rocks. I think that the best time to visit the Rose Garden is probably not in late August. There are may clusters of flora to look through and all in all very relaxing.

I then walked back into downtown and managed to find the tourist information booth. By the time I found it I decided that I was staying in Cambridge for the weekend. Friends in York were just not getting back to me and there are still many, many things that I want to do here. I want to go into the Colleges for one thing so I picked up some information on a two hour walking tour. I'll take that tomorrow morning after Mark and Lindsay leave at the crack of dawn for the airport. Poor them. They are actually leaving at 5am.

Well, I think I had better go see what else I can do to help them get ready.

English coutryside

I flew into London yesterday...or was it the day before? I flew British Airways and was looking forward to a good flight. All in all I don't really like flying long distances and was curious to see if British Airways was really any better than Air Canada. The verdict: not really.

I took a cab to the airport because I was carrying a gigantic bag of presents for my hosts. When I got the airport 2 hours early, I found the British Airways check-in line so long that it wove all the way through its waiting queue section and the continued all the way to near the end wall of the terminal. When I found the end and then asked the question that I subsequently got asked many times: Is this the line for British Airways? I guess that people couldn't believe it was so long. Eventually they split the line by flight but it still took me over an hour to get checked in.

Security was surprisingly fast and they didn't even ask me to turn on my cd player or camera. I bought a couple of boxes of maple candy for Dana and Rachel and Pieter (and winced at the cost because I had been looking for a box for a couple of days but ran out of time). I ended up with a middle seat (in a side bay). Luckily the people next to me were really nice. The plane was a 777 and each seat had a tv screen with choiced about what you could see. There was also a map channel where you could track the progress of the flight and get weather reports about where you were going. Kind of mesmerizing. Like the weather channel on mute and with the same story over and over again. Dinner was salmon and they offered everybody complimentary wine because of a late start! Air Canada would never do that... But...the seats were so close to each other and we had so little let room that it was difficult to get in and out especially when seats were reclined. I was surprised about that. That is a long time to be that squished.

We landed late because we had to circle the airport for 20 minutes. Then I seriously underestimated how long it would take me to get to Cambridge. First we had to get onto these little buses to get the Termial 4 from the plane. Then we had to go through customs and get our luggage. Then I had to find how to get to the other terminals. Then I had to wait for that Heathrow Express train. Once that train arrived we all had to wait for a few minutes while they did some kind of security sweep. Didn't look like anything to me. When I got to termial 2 I had to find the bus station. Signs are not very clear and there aren't enough people to ask questions. Eventually I figured out how to buy a ticket to Cambridge. The woman sold me a ticket on the milk run bus and when I showed the driver my ticket and told him where I was going, he told me that the bus next to him would have gotten me there 90 minutes earlier! But apparently there was nothing I could do. And it was 4am for me and I had hardly slept. This driver was pretty short and rude to this poor man travelling with two bitchy teenagers and I felt pretty sorry for him especially since he was nice to me (in fact lots of men were...play the single girl card when necessary-I have no pride).

Anyway, got to Cambridge and has to wait a while for the local bus. It twisted through Cambridge for a while and very soon I was at Mark and Lindsay's place. Their kids have really grown. Sean is a bigger version of himself and I can't get over how much a baby changes from six months to one year. She is super cute and talks all the time. No one has any idea what she is saying :)

Today we drove up to a beach on the North Sea. The beaches all have these concrete boardwalks with tons of cheesy money-sucking kids games and candy stores and rides and stuff to distract people. It was pretty cold but we played in the sand for a while and splashed in the water. After that we went to Castle Rising Castle and toured around. Neat standard castle built in various stages since the 1400s or so. The grounds are pretty and I read Sean a Curious George story while sitting on the ruines of an old chapel. I tried to stay awake on the drive home but sadly Lindsay had only Sean to talk to.

Good times so far. Gotta go help Lindsay with dinner and Sean wants to play games on the computer.