The world's disneyland

This one begins on a Wednesday night; James, Lindsay and I head out to the airport for our flight to Brussels. First experience with RyanAir and asides from the mad dash to get on the plane(no assigned seats), everything went quite smoothly. We landed and took a bus to one of the train stations where we had to walk another 20 minutes to get to the central train station, and then another train ride to get to where the Eurolines bus would pick us up. We met this nice man (28 though he looked 21) who was working in Brussels, but was born and raised in Mexico, studied in Canada for two years where he met his girlfriend who he then went to Spain to live with. He was an interesting fellow and pointed us in the right direction, since otherwise we wouldn’t have a clue where to go. We stopped for a bit to eat, Falafel and fries, than made our way to the Central station. After sleeping in the Central train station for a couple hours we headed for the north station where Lindsay and James napped for about an hour more. The bus ride was packed, slept most of the nearly 4 hour ride, and was dropped off about 10 minutes outside of the center of Amsterdam.
Then we were there. And it was love at first sight. Everything about the city was enamoring to me; from the efficiency and appealing look of the tram system, to the picturesque buildings to the beautiful parks that dotted the city. We had a bit of trouble finding our hotel and once we found it and got in it began to hail. We took that time to relax a bit from all the traveling. Once things cleared up we set out for a nice walk through the city. Cold and cloudy, but nothing could ruin my sparkling image of this Disney-esque place. Later in the evening we met up with Zach (from Villa Park) and Megan (Lindsay’s roommate) who had just arrived from there flight and went out for a night on the town.
The next morning began at a decent hour; we got our complementary breakfast and set out to the center of the city. After a bit of exploring we found ourselves at the Van Gogh museum. What an amazing man he was. Crazy no doubt, but an artistic genius, especially considering he didn’t want to be a painter until the latter portion of his life. He only spent about 10 years painting but managed to make 900 paintings, 1100 drawings and write about 500 letters. The museum curator set up the exhibitions in chronological order (I don’t know if that’s the norm, but it was my first visit to a museum dedicated to a specific artist). Ingenious and remarkable. It’s quite a shame VG had such powerful mental troubles, but the same illness that eventually caused him to commit suicide might have been the fuel for his passionate works of art. Later that evening we moseyed on over to the Red Light District. A place unlike any other. Beautiful women in all the windows, drug dealers swarming the streets, sex shows in every building. How is this place legal? I could never imagine such a place flourishing anywhere back home, but day in and day out this place is packed with people and is kept in check, at least on the outside, quite well. The rest of the night was spent walking around Leidsplein and eating the MOST delicious treats from Rene’s Bakery. Strawberry doughnuts, vanilla cream filled croissants, some random Dutch treat that I could never pronounce. Heavenly.
Saturday was spent meandering through the parks of Amsterdam. Vondelpark is a gorgeous, spacious park where locals run and ride their bikes, dogs enjoy rolling around in the wet grass, and tourists like us can just admire the low-laying clouds hovering over the pristine environment. We stumbled upon a film museum which was showing home videos from across the world. A Japanese foreign film was being shown at the time we came in, but certain complications kept us from being able to enter the theater. I also tried to imagine how much of the movie I’d understand as it was in Japanese with Dutch subtitles. Dinner was a struggle, as every meal is due to the enormous variety of food. From Mexican to Argentinean to Indonesian to Chinese and American and Pancakes and Kebabs and oh the choices. We settled on Chinese and feasted on a sampler platter of 5 of the most popular dishes. Some more exploring was done after the meal and the night ended at a somewhat early hour as Zach had to get up at 4 something in the morning.
A sad Sunday as I had to say goodbye to what had become my favorite place thus far. The ride back to the airport was another long yet bearable journey. Then an interesting and confusing event occurred at the airport. I was getting some shut eye waiting for the boarding call with my headphones on when I heard a large group of French people gathering at the gate. Now, we have all heard the jokes about the French being rude and the like but those were just words to me. Until this kind gentleman woke me up from my slumber (headphones on and all) and began repeating the word “Baptist”(now, figuring he was speaking French, as I fond out soon into the conversation he knew no English, I had no clue what this Baptist word meant, imagine the French accent and everything). This turned into a 5 minute discussion of me saying No, I don’t know what you’re saying and him repeating Baptist(maybe 50 times). By this point, all his little cronies where surrounding the 3 of us (James Lindsay and I) and laughing to themselves all the while not explaining what the hell was going on. Finally a nice girl sitting next to us spoke some English and asked us about what we were doing in Brussels and so on. She was warned by her friends not to say anything to us, but she was still thoughtful enough to engage us in conversation to divert attention from the asshole that had been badgering us. Now, does this make the stereotypes true of the French, of course not, its one isolated incident that could have been instigated by anyone, but does it help their cause. No.
Either way, this week has been a pleasant one, I have been feeling a lot better and been going out a little more. I just came back from Perugia today, where they hold the annual EuroChocolate Festival. Absolutely delicious. Fantastic idea though it required 6 hours of train rides for only about 2 or so hours of adventuring there. Well Worth it. Its now about 1:30 in the morning of Friday and I’m waiting for 3 to roll around so I can head out on my journey to Venice and Florence. Train ride up to Venice. All day Friday including the night, Saturday morning we are renting a car again and driving down to Florence for the day and night, then making a longer pit stop at the Ferrari Factory to actually look around, then make it home safely again and hopefully without going through the 30 kilometers an hour speed zones.


As always I hope everyone is doing well and midterms came back satisfactory. I’m a bit sad I wont be able to dress up in another ridiculous costume for Halloween this year.

Until next time

Ciao famiglia