Today was mostly a travel day. I personally was looking forward to getting to London only so that I could quit writing this blog in French and having Google Translate translate it for us. It’s tiring to write in a language you don’t know.

So we packed our bags, bid adieu to the amazing and beautiful and sometimes rude Gay Paree, and boarded a Eurostar train from Paris to London, which traveled under the English channel. The trip was largely uneventful… I kind of expected more out of the “chunnel,” but it was just dark.

Along the way we took some pictures from the train of the French countryside. It was mostly pretty boring scenery, which caused us to entertain ourselves in other ways:

Once in London, we saw some of the typical London scenery, including the ubiquitous double decker buses, and while we didn’t pass by any of the touristy sights, the architecture is markedly different than Paris, looking more like any US city than the grandiose and ancient edifices that are peppered throughout Paris, although this one was a little high fallootin’:

 

Speaking of ancient, it was the first time we’ve seen a phone booth in eons, so we had to take a picture of them, and two different kinds to boot!

Our Uber driver dropped us off at the address provided, and we proceeded to the door and knocked with the knocker. No answer. We rapped again. Still no answer. I dug up the contact information I had through VRBO (for the record, I think I like AirBnB better than VRBO), sent a message, tried to call… all to no avail. We asked several passersby if they knew where the address we had was… they were all friendly and polite, but none of them knew.

Hmm. Other than getting lost on the Paris Metro, this was the first major foul-up we’d encountered on our trip. I called again, checked Google Maps, did all sorts of things. Finally we began walking up and down the street. Voila! (We’re still thinking in French.) The address contained the name of the apartment complex, and the number within said complex. There really is no such address as was given to us per se. We were deposited within a shouting distance of the address, but it certainly wasn’t obvious. The VRBO property manager loses a star or two for providing less than stellar directions. Even the neighbors had no idea where the place was.

So we lug the suitcases (well, I lug the suitcases: note to self: get smaller suitcases for the next international trip) up to the third floor, and are greeted by a Russian maid who speaks virtually no English. Sigh. We were so looking forward to communicating only in English for a while.

Since she had an hour to go, we deposited our luggage and explored the neighborhood. Shortly we saw a place featuring fish and chips. You gotta have fish and chips in London, and so we thought it very appropriate as our first meal. The place was very cleverly called, “Fishers Fish & Chips.”

So we order the fish and chips, and when we were served, we realized that we had both experienced a new personal record for the largest piece of fish ever served to us as a fish and chip:

And here we thought they’d serve smaller portions overseas. The good news is that I now have breakfast for the next morning, since there was no way either of us could finish those monsters. We’re hoping the fish didn’t get caught near the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The waitress was a hoot, and we even bantered with another couple next to us. Thus far, we have found just about every Londoner we’ve encountered to be exceedingly friendly. One lady even hit my leg just a little in the grocery store and just about fell all over herself apologizing profusely. In Paris or even Amsterdam they wouldn’t have even acknowledged it if they’d drawn blood.

The view from the flat is not exactly touristy, but it’s fine. The flat itself isn’t going to get a great rating. In addition to the lack of communication by the owner, the fridge stunk to high heaven (I walked into the kitchen after Carolyn had the door open while depositing our groceries and noticed the significant odor even then), the toilet has a hard time flushing, and the bathtub’s vinyl shower curtain has that mold they so often get. It’s not horrible, but the place is definitely not cared for to the level we’ve seen in other VRBO’s and AirBnB’s. But it’ll do.

At least the decor is magnificent:

We’re gonna relax the rest of the day. All of this walking has been hell on our feet, and we’re both a bit tuckered out. We’ll probably even take it a little easy tomorrow: just figure out the Tube and get our bearings and see maybe a thing or two, but we won’t push it. Part of the vacation is to see things, sure, but the other part is to relax, and there hasn’t been a ton of that so far.

And of course, we must close with the Door of the Day:

Carolyn and I both freely acknowledge that we are incredibly lucky to be able to be sitting here in Paris, sipping some French wine purchased at the grocery store for under ten bucks, eating some chocolate, and letting our feet rest up from the well-intentioned abuse we’ve put them through.

Despite this great fortune and our gratitude for same, we felt even more fortunate after deciding to put our shoes back on last night and wander out of our apartment to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up. Once there, we knew we had to go up in it and see Paris at night.

Before we post the slide show of our best pictures of the experience, I thought we’d describe the surrounding area around the tower a bit. Everyone sees the tower and understand it represents Paris, but what’s it really like around it?

There’s a fairly large park that surrounds the tower, and at least at night it looks to be filled with couples and groups that bring maybe a blanket and a picnic basket and some wine in order to view the thing as if it was one continuous fireworks display. While romance is in the air, the area is also filled with street vendors hawking everything from bottles of wine and champagne to miniature statues and flying toys and even roses that they stick in the ladies’ hand and then step back expecting to be paid. I also suspect that these same vendors are probably the most responsible for the many warnings that are posted to be wary of pickpockets.

So, it’s a bit of a mishmash and I think it’s best just to plow through all that and get to the base of the tower and decide whether you want to go to level one, two, or all the way to the top, which apparently doesn’t get offered every day. There are four elevators on each of the tower’s bases that go to levels one and two. Once on level two, there is a single elevator that takes you to the very top through the ever-narrowing spire.

On this lucky day not only did they offer rides to the top, but it was a crystal-clear night, with visibility as far as the eye could see. In addition, they have a light show of sorts once an hour, with twinkling lights that sparkle all over the outside of the tower. As we approached it for the first time, suddenly the light show began, and we stood and watched in complete gratitude that everything was going so well for us. It was quite a special night.

I’m not especially fond of heights especially if it’s in any way dicey. I don’t mind flying at all, and can look down from the highest building if I’m not standing next to a wall that only comes to my waist or some such. But if it’s something like an outside glass elevator or where you don’t feel totally secure, then I hear the siren’s call from below and can picture my body hurtling through the air to be met with a thud on the ground, and it’s just no fun at all for me. So once we got to the second level and I could see as far as the eye could see and was completely safe and content, I really had no desire to go up the spire to the very top. Carolyn, however, has no such phobia (unless there were spiders in the elevator), and so after some contemplation I decided I really wouldn’t have any fun taking the elevator ride, and so she went up on her own. By her description, I wouldn’t have had any issues at all once at the top; it’s all enclosed by thick wire or glass, but even she felt a little uneasy about the elevator ride, so in the end, I was glad I didn’t go up. Her pictures are included in the slideshow but even with the extra height, not much more can be seen so I have no regrets not going to the very top.

In any case, and without further ado, here is our slide show of the Eiffel Tower experience:

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The tower is truly a remarkable feat of engineering, and worth every bit of its iconic status as representative of Paris. We shall never forget that shimmering tower of steel and light, and our magical evening ascending it and seeing the City of Light in all its glory.

The next day began around noon as I’d woken up in the middle of the night and just couldn’t return to sleep, and the next thing I knew I was stumbling out of bed to discover it was almost 11:00 and Carolyn in all her sweetness had just let me sleep. Our main game plan to start was to see Notre Dame, which we did, and can be best presented with yet another slide show:

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After that, we had a nice meal in a little restaurant in the Latin Quarter, although we noticed that virtually every restaurant in one of the side streets had almost identical menus. The food was tasty, but I’m not sure why they think everyone wants the same thing. That seemed a little odd to us.

Afterwards, we navigated through the Metro again and went to the Champs-Elysees (which is pronounced something like “Shah is silly” and translates to: “Elysee is the Champ” because Elysee was the wife of the guy who invented the boulevard and she made him make it all about shopping) and had a romantic stroll on a street with a famous name but that is really nothing special except that you can say, “We had a romantic stroll along the Champs-Elysees.”

We wandered about the Arch de Triomphe again and then made our way home on the Metro, almost not getting lost most of the time, and then camped out drinking wine, eating chocolate, writing this blog, and being content with our two full days and two half days in Paris. We will gladly come back.

 

Before departing on this European adventure, we purchased a Paris two-day museum pass, which allows you quick and easy access to a gajillion of the museums and attractions in the city. The Mother of All Museums is of course the Louvre, so that was first up.

After walking the first couple of blocks from our apartment to find the Metro Station, we came around a corner and saw this:

We’re not sure if they have a name for it, but it sure is one big-ass cell phone tower.

So we got lost four or ten times finding the Metro Station; I think our first mistake was  that we first got on at a different station than we intended. We were trying to get to the Tourist Bureau to pick up our Museum Pass, but by the end of the ride we were the only ones left in the station and the train just sat there as if to say, “only dumb-ass Americans should be sitting in me now.” Note the lack of anyone else in the station. I’m pretty sure I saw a skeleton covered in cobwebs in one of the corners.

We were glad that we purchased a two-day Metro pass, which allowed us to jump from train to train without having to pay yet another fare. We think we saved about 143 Euros today alone, plus we taught all sorts of Parisians how to sing the theme from The Flintstones.

After backtracking and pondering the maps and my iPhone and arguing about which direction we should go, we finally somehow ended up at the tourist bureau in the early afternoon. And we started at 6:00 AM.

Just kiddin’.

We’re actually taking it fairly easy, and not pushing to see every damn thing possible since we’re not as young as we used to be and our feet are getting a little sick and tired of being walked on, so they complain more often. So we’re just doing what we can and not trying to conquer Paris in two days. Conquering Paris didn’t work out too well for Hitler in any case.

The funny thing was that it seemed like every time we got lost, we’d stumble upon something interesting or that we already wanted to see, for instance, the Arc de Triomphe, which stands for, “Victory Over Your Arches,” a slogan Nike originally rejected in favor of “Just Do It.” We walked out of a Metro Station thinking we might be near the Louvre, and instead came face to face with the second most famous Parisian monument there is, with the first being the well-known “Statue of a Rude Parisian,” which we neglected to take a picture of.

And so, feeling a little smug because we walked out of a Metro Station right into the Parisian version of the Golden Arches just like we knew what we were doing, we proceeded to return to the Metro Station in order to enjoy another hour or two of subway riding. There’s simply nothing like it, there were times we both raised our hands in the air screaming “whoo hoo!” like it was a roller coaster. We were even entertained by an accordion player who played for free and even offered us something out of his cup, which we politely declined to accept because he looked a little bedraggled.

I know it doesn’t look like much, but this building was a real sight for sore eyes, let me tell you. The Paris Tourist Office: the finish line of a two-hour Metro ride that should’ve been about fifteen minutes.

After retrieving our Museum Passes, we proceed to walk to the Louvre. What follows is a pictorial guide to what we saw, with a little less commentary than you’re used to ignoring:

We finally made it to the Louvre, featuring the iconic pyramid and the even more iconic selfie.

The courtyards surrounding the Lourve are expansive, with massive buildings surrounding it. Even the sky looks big in France.

Trying to remember the name of that big tower thingee.

How’d you like to get the cleaning contract for this building?

The French obviously like their arches; this isn’t the Arc de Triomphe, it’s in the courtyard of the Louvre. The U.S. imitates the French by building thousands of McDonalds.

A nice Canadian couple traded picture-taking with us. We stole their camera and ran.

Everyone’s seen pictures of the Louvre Pyramid from the outside, but how about from the inside? The Pyramid is what you go through to enter the Louvre. Once inside, all that glass makes it quite hot inside.

Veni, vidi, vici.

Winged Victory. Too bad she lost her mind over it.

The Mona Lisa. We were told that it would be smaller than we expected, but actually, maybe due to those expectations, it seemed just the right size to us. It isn’t often you get to see the most famous and iconic piece of artwork in the history of the world in person. Viewing this was worth the visit to the Louvre alone, and perhaps even Paris.

It’s behind glass so you’re getting the reflection of Bernie Sanders’ head in it, but that just serves to prove we saw it and didn’t just pull an image off the internet.

I was going to buy a copy of this as a paint-by-numbers set, but I didn’t want to pay the airlines for oversized luggage.

Even the ceilings throughout the Louvre have artwork elaborate enough to enhance nearly any brothel.

This chair scared Carolyn. I think it was the lack of cushions.

Every bedroom should have a view of a glass pyramid.

Sometimes you have to get naked to pull a sliver from your foot. Quite a beautiful statue, actually. I just hope the model didn’t have to sit there with the sliver in her foot the entire six years it took to carve it.

Vinnie, vampy, Visa.

Michelangelo  so beautifully captured the angst one feels when you can’t find your pants.

We have to admit there were a few times when we got a little boared.

The Venus de Milo. Are you kidding me? First the Mona Lisa, and then the Venus de Milo?  All that’s left is a portrait of Donald Trump!

I asked Carolyn to pose without her clothes on to match up better, but she declined.

This statue of Athena was created around 430 BC, which is before cable and iPhones and everything. But not apparently before the invention of chocolate ice cream, which the model obviously had just finished eating.

We sphinx this is something Egyptian.

That was about the last of what we saw at the Louvre. I read that if one took the time to just glance at everything the Louvre has to offer, it would take nine months to do it. I’m a little dubious of that fact, unless they’re counting an Indiana Jones-like basement warehouse full of antiquities, but the place is indeed massive. There’s just no way to cover much of it in just one day, much less enough of a day to make the feet on old farts like us start barking like a couple of chihuahuas having their tails stepped on.

That said, you can only look at so many big paintings of naked people being harassed by little naked angels, or statues of other naked people standing around wondering where their clothes are, or sculptures of faces with blank stares on account of the fact that they hadn’t yet invented glass eyes when they carved them.

But my other thought was that only the French would create a museum like the Louvre, where millions of people all over the world would come visit to see some of the most famous pieces of art in the history of the planet, and have almost every informational placard printed only in French. I’ve seen one-room museums in the US that have four languages on every sign. As a result, we had little idea what the history was for most of the artwork, and we sure as hell weren’t going to try and translate every one of them on an iPhone app. Yes, France, you lost the battle for the world’s go-to language. So just surrender to that fact and put some English and German and Japanese and maybe Italian on some of those cards. Keeping everything only in French just makes you look petty. You have a beautiful language, to be sure, but there a lot of other ones too.

That said, just so you don’t get the wrong idea, Paris is an amazing city. It’s as if the French wanted to build the biggest of everything anytime they could. Hopefully, they’re not trying to compensate for other issues, but the result is a city full of history, and very large buildings with statues and decorations that give true meaning to the word “awesome.” Paris should be on the bucket list of every traveler. Sure, the French are a bit arrogant, and sure, almost all of them who work in information kiosks deliver only one sentence answers with no hint of any smile or enthusiasm, but it’s an amazing city and you can in fact run into people in Paris who are more than happy to help. Just don’t expect it to be the ones who are paid to do so.

No day would be complete without a Carolyn Door of the Day, and in typical French fashion, it’s pretty massive.

On the way back from the Louvre, we again got turned around in the Metro, plus the line we wanted to go on had a big X through it because they heard we were coming, so we ended up walking some more and came across this plaza with some Very Big Things in it, including a ferris wheel from the Middle Ages.

And yet another Door of the Day had to sneak in, because, you know, Paris doesn’t horse around.

And now we’re back in the apartment, after giving up on the Metro and calling for an Uber car, resting our weary feet and making plans for our next day of sightseeing. We could have used another three or fifty days here to see everything, but after knocking out the Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and best of all, the Metro Subway system, we’re content that we’ve already hit the main highlights of The City of Light.

The rest is already gravy.

 

And so we bid a fond farewell to Amsterdam. What a lovely city full of lovely people. The contrast it provides to Paris, as you’ll read later, makes us especially appreciative of that Dutch city. I don’t know if we’ll be back, but if we do come back, it will be gladly.

These are our last photos of Amsterdam, including a bevy of parked bicycles that so defines the city.

And of course the last Door of the Day:

We boarded a Thaylis train for Paris after returning our rental car. It was nice to drive early on Sunday morning as there was little traffic, and downtown Amsterdam is as challenging a city to drive in as I’ve ever seen. Already we’ve seen parts of Paris that are a little daunting (like four lanes all converging in a sort of roundabout with no street lines whatsoever, in what can only be described as complete chaos), but Amsterdam is overall more complicated. But it’s a good thing, because the complications favor bike-riding, pedestrians, and mass transit.

The journey through Holland, Belgium, and then France provided a little countryside scenery. Nothing overly interesting, although we did observe that once we hit Belgium you could see a noticeable difference in cleanliness and quality of life and surroundings. Far more junk was strewn about everywhere, and it looked much more industrial. The houses were far more unkempt than in Holland. Granted, it was a view from a train, but it was noticeable throughout Belgium until we approached France.

I’m not sure what the cultural and political differences are between the two countries that causes that, but whatever it is, it’s another feather in the cap of Holland.

We also have noticed throughout all three of these countries that graffiti is far more prevalent than we normally see in the US, but a lot of it is of an artistic quality that is quite impressive. Again, no idea why something like this is true, but from the train’s window, anytime there was a building, there was likely graffiti on it.

The train stopped in Rotterdam, Antwerp and Brussels before it finally arrived in Paris. And that’s when the fun really began.

So just to paint the proper picture, when we left Amsterdam, it was on a peaceful Sunday morning with little traffic. The train station there was quiet and peaceful and well organized. The information booth they held to help passengers answered the questions thoroughly and understandably. Once on the train, it reminded us as to how quiet and smooth a nice train could be. You could almost hear a pin drop in the compartment. I will say I expected a little bit more of a full-service train, however… we were in car 18 and the food car was all the way up in number 1, and that’s just too far to walk to bother. It was otherwise like a very comfortable, and quiet, commuter train. We watched the countryside roll by, looking forward to seeing Paris for the first time.

The first problem we had with Paris was all my fault. I apparently wrote down the arrival time in a trip book I created to keep track of all this as 11:30. The reality was 1:30. In the meantime, Arnaud, our host of the AirBnB apartment we were staying at in France, had planned to greet us at 12:00. At 1:00 he began texting me. This is the actual transcript of the text:

Arnaud “Hello Kevin it’s 1:00 PM. Where are you please?”

Me: “Still on the train.” (At that point, I had no idea that I had given him the wrong information.)

Arnaud: “I will plan on another meeting at 6:00 pm. I am sorry I have other’s meetings and I cannot wait you.”

Me: “I’m sorry, perhaps the eta they gave us was wrong? How will we get into the apt.?”

Arnaud: “Where are you exactly?”

Me: “I’m not sure- the internet on the train isn’t working. My best guess right now is that perhaps instead of 11:35 arrival it was 1:35.”

Arnaud: “Where are you?”

Arnaud: “Hello Kevin it’s 1:00 PM. Where are you please?”

Me: “I can only guess that we are 1/2 hour outside of Paris.”

(long delay)

Me: “Please confirm that you can read this text.”

Arnaud: “Yes I can. We meet us at 6:00 PM.”

Me: “Any suggestions as to what we can do in the meantime with our luggage?”

Arnaud: “At the train station Gare du Nord.”

Um, yeah. As it turns out, Arnaud is a delightful man who simply doesn’t speak English as his first language. I still don’t understand why he kept asking where we were no matter what I said, but in the end, I screwed up and gave him the wrong time, and we departed the train knowing that we were going to have four or five hours to kill with two big pieces of luggage.

But boy what a difference a big city like Paris makes. Unlike the bucolic friendliness of Amsterdam with bluebirds nesting in the rafters pooping little sherbet rainbows, the Paris train station was all noise and mayhem and confusion. As soon as we got off the train we were accosted by Middle Eastern-looking women asking us if we spoke English and if so could we sign this petition for something or other? Taxi drivers wanted our fare. We saw a man and a woman, presumably competing vendors of some kind, screaming at each other to the point where the man raised his hand as if to strike her. Unintimidated, the woman continued to scream at him. The crowds roiled around them seemingly without taking any notice of the near-violence.

Carolyn went off to find a toilet (only to discover that it costs about 70 cents to get in. I’d heard that one of the U.S.’s hidden benefits was “free toilets everywhere!” Apparently that’s true. The bathroom was also unisex.), and while I was standing there wondering what we were going to do with our luggage, a very nice and well dressed man approached me and offered his assistance. When I explained our predicament with the luggage, he said that every apartment complex has a doorman or whatever and you can leave the luggage with him no problem. I was a bit dubious about that, and he even looked at a map with me and called Arnaud to see if he could straighten out that fact in French, but only got a message. I told him we were going to take an Uber to the apartment and he said Uber was not so good there, and there was a big strike of some sort in the city and traffic was horrible. I grew ever more suspicious as his helpfulness knew no bounds, until he began to offer the limo service his company so conveniently offered. I politely declined and proceeded to an information booth where the man inside gruffly pointed across the terminal saying I could store our luggage “over there.”

Not knowing quite sure what he meant, we proceeded with the luggage in that direction, with Mr. Helpful calling after us as if he couldn’t believe we weren’t going to allow him to continue to help us.

(I don’t know if there was a strike, but the traffic wasn’t that bad, there was no doorman of any kind at the apartment, and Uber was absolutely no problem. It began to appear to us that the French were either extremely unhelpful or extremely helpful if they wanted to rip you off.)

We saw a bank of elevators (why are all the elevators in Europe so small? Most of them can barely handle four people, much less two or more with any kind of luggage) with a floor that said something about lost luggage, so we proceeded there. We were greeted with an XRay scanner just like at an airport, so we put it through, hoping we weren’t about to board a plane to Algiers, collected it on the other side, and wondered what to do. Not a one of the employees bothered to help us, and of course none of them spoke English anyway. Then we spotted a whole bank of lockers. Voila! Lockers!

Unfortunately, despite this being a seven week trip, our big American luggage just doesn’t work that well in Europe. In fact, before we boarded the train in Amsterdam, the lady who checked our tickets shook her head and pointed us to another door, even though we had assigned seating, saying something about “there are written rules for oversized luggage, you have to go over there.” Like I’d read the rules about the size of the luggage. I think she was French, it was, after all, a French train.

Although to be fair, we did encounter a train purser who was French and very friendly and joked with all the passengers as he checked the tickets. Maybe he lives in Amsterdam.

Anyway, I did my best to cram the two suitcases into the largest locker they had, but after much grunting and sweating we just couldn’t fit them both in. Okay, two lockers. They’re $10 lockers, so my mistyping of a “1” into an “11” will now cost us $20. Long story short, it probably took us twenty minutes to figure out how to lock those lockers and get them paid for. The people at the counter were of no help at all. A man who was fixing the lockers came over to help, started the process, and left. But it still didn’t work. I used credit cards, got some change converted to some that looked like they only took change, it was useless. I must’ve tried 15 times and 15 different ways. And we weren’t the only ones. One couple had their ticket eaten by the machine when they were trying to retrieve their luggage. The man explained to them in French they didn’t understand that they had to have a ticket to get their luggage out. They explained that they did, but the machine ate it. The man continued to explain that they needed a ticket.

Some of the lockers were broken. Some had numbers over them while others did not. It was a mess worthy of a third world country.

All the while, virtually every French person we met would only provide help in one sentence increments, except for the guy who was trying to con us into an expensive limo ride, where we would’ve been left at the curb at an apartment that had, in fact, no doorman or anything of the kind.

It was a madhouse. Dirty. Noisy. Grumpy. Chaotic.

Welcome to France!

As we finally successfully locked the lockers, I simply cracked up. All of the stereotypes of French people were confirmed to us in one fell swoop. I thought maybe they were just a little touchy about speaking French. But in fact, most of them are just totally disinclined to provide any assistance to anyone, even if they are sitting under a sign that says, “Assistance Here.” Hey, it’s a better story than everything going smoothly and everything working well. And it proves that sometimes stereotypes develop for a reason.

So, our plans for that day changed somewhat, and we found a little restaurant and ordered lasagna and a Heineken beer (which tasted sweeter than the Heineken I’ve had in the US), because when in Paris, you must eat Italian food and drink Dutch beer. It was actually quite good, however, and not terribly expensive.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in a walkabout around Paris. Paris reminds me so much of New York, except for the architecture. It’s just a big, bustling city with people of every stripe and color, with cars and busses competing on the roads that are virtually bereft of bicycles. Amsterdam, it ain’t.

So we just wandered about, snapping some pictures here and there, until it was time to go back to the train station, retrieve our luggage, and Uber over to the apartment. But not, of course, without getting the Door Fix in:

The apartment is as advertised, and as mentioned earlier, Arnaud is a lovely man who gave us a nice tour of the two rooms. It has everything we need and nothing more, and is only a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower, which we drove right by on the way to apartment. The side-street neighborhood it’s on looks nice and quiet, and we’re content to be in our new home in Paris, albeit already exposed to the craziness that Paris can offer.

After yet another afternoon of walking, along with all of the challenges of travel, and after washing our clothes worn in Amsterdam, Carolyn lay on the couch for a well-deserved nap. During the next two days, we will conquer the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysees, The Louvre, and whatever else we can find. Two full days in Paris is certainly not enough, but we’ll get our taste of it and then move on to London.

 

April is a great time to be in Holland, since it’s time for the tulips to bloom. There is a huge garden about a half hour outside of Amsterdam called the Keukenhof. It’s only open about three weeks of the year to showcase all of that bloomage, and that just happens to be when we’re here. Whether we planned it that way originally or just got lucky, I’m not sure, since this whole thing started last August. But we figured we better take advantage of a rare opportunity to see something that can’t be seen most of the year.

We decided to rent a car to go out there as it otherwise would have involved two bus rides each way, which not only would have cost about the same if not more, but we would’ve forced us to be beholden to their schedule, and we had no idea how long we’d want to be in the Keukenhof.

So we got a little Fiat 500: an automatic, but despite that, it took me about five minutes to figure out how to put it in gear. It’s actually not a bad little ride for a one-lung putt putt job of a mini car, once you figure out the transmission.

Driving in Amsterdam proper is something of a challenge due to there being lanes for bikes, busses/taxis/ubers and cars, and they criss-cross all over the place with everyone pretty much assuming they have the right of way. Listening to Siri direct us is also a bit comical in that every street name is incomprehensible, so you really need to have the visual map visible to understand where you’re supposed to go, so I drove one-handed while holding my iPhone. Fortunately, we made it out of town without any major incident (not counting that one bike rider who went flying over the hood), but I was also glad it was a Saturday, and not a weekday where the traffic (and the other drivers’ patience) would’ve been ten times worse.

Once we got there, we quickly found out we weren’t the only ones with that idea. The place was pretty packed, but fortunately, those who run the place were very efficient and we didn’t have to wait long to park or get into the gardens.

Entrance to the Keukenhof. I guess it’s not very impressive, but I think they were just under-promising and over-delivering.

Once in, we were greeted with an array of the most colorful flowers possible, spread out over acres and acres of beautifully landscaped land. Here’s their YouTube propaganda:

We took approximately 1,325,124 photos of all the flowers. Rather than bore and alienate all two of our loyal readers, here is a slideshow sampling of everything we saw (may take a second to load):

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Can’t help it:

We also tried the obligatory National Gross Food of The Country You Have to Say You Tried, which in the case of The Netherlands, is raw herring, made tastier by putting it in a bun and covering it with pickles and onions.

Carolyn had a bite. One. But I was proud of her for that. She’s not a seafood lover, but was willing to try something once. I missed her best grimace, though.

I ate the rest, and it really wasn’t bad. The fish itself didn’t have a ton of flavor, which is why they put the pickles and onions on it. I wouldn’t order it in a restaurant, but now we can both say we’ve eaten raw herring.

Also visible from the Kuekenhof are the rows of colorful tulips and other flowers.

We didn’t have a selfie stick, but we took some obligatory selfies anyway:

And of course what trip to Holland would be complete without a picture of a windmill?

Or wooden shoes? Especially Wooden Shoe Pumps, like all the hot Hollywood celebrities are wearing.

After putting yet more miles on our own regular shoes made in Chinese sweatshops, we hopped back in the car and decided to get lost in Holland’s countryside. We both enjoy just driving around seeing the sights and how people live outside the city and tourist areas. We enjoyed a very nice meal at a randomly picked cafe (noticing that outside of Amsterdam, people are not as fluent with their English, nor are menus printed with English subtitles as they are in the city). Our journey took us to the coast, where we spent all of two chilly minutes looking at the English Channel. We couldn’t see England, but we’ll see her plenty in about a week when we head over to London.

Even Holland’s country roads are specially designed to accommodate bikes. When we first started going down this road, we thought maybe it was a one-way street. Turns out it’s just what they do so there is plenty of room for the bikes. If you’re approaching another car and there are no bikes, you just straddle the white line. If there are bikes, you wait until there’s room to pass. Even in the countryside, bike riders were everywhere, and bike accommodation is ubiquitous.

And so, after a full day of exploring and seeing some of the most beautiful flowers in the world, we returned to our hotel, considering our last full day in Holland as a complete success.

I hate Vincent van Gogh. If he were in this room right now I’d bite off his other ear.

Why do I say that? Because he paints a bunch of stuff and then gets all famous after cutting off part of his ear and ultimately shooting himself in the chest and then they build a big museum for him in Amsterdam where you get to stand in line to buy a ticket and at first the line moves reasonably fast and you inch forward bit by bit thinking the whole thing might take maybe 1/2 hour at the most and after you approach the front of the line and stand and stand and stand, all in the rain mind you, you realize that no one has moved for at least 15 minutes, which turns into 30, which turns into 45, and ultimately you don’t get in for nearly 2-1/2 hours at which point you decide that Vincent van Gogh was a jerk and his paintings all suck. I was ready to spray paint over his name on the museum and replace it with Vincent van Stop.

However, Carolyn finally channeled the dark side and they eventually had to let us in.

Once in, we went to the first exhibit area which featured the theme of, well, prostitutes. Picture taking was forbidden but since I felt it unlikely they’d grab the camera and throw it into a canal like in the Red Light District, I snapped a few before they chased me out with a broom and a stream of Dutch profanities.

There were a couple more than the above but they include images of boobies and this is a family website.

I was a little irritated to have waited in line for 2-1/2 hours only to find the gallery virtually empty in places… plus there were pictures of boobies in said places, so you’d think it would’ve been packed. I couldn’t understand it. But then we went to the van Gogh portion of the exhibit and discovered that’s where all the people were. Apparently people would rather see van Gogh paintings than boobies. Go figure.

After a few hours of wandering around the exhibit our feet started barking at us, and we just ended up plum tired. Of course, on the way home, Carolyn had to get her door fix in:

And we thought it would be cool to post all of these beautiful flowers that were in pots lining the way to the gallery:

And otherwise we just walked to the hotel in the rain, and Carolyn promptly fell asleep and I posted this stuff. Sometimes you just have to have a day where you do mostly one thing, or nothing, and this was one of those days, all thanks to a frickin’ endless wait in line for an art exhibit.

Since this wasn’t the most exciting day ever, I’ll close with some observations about the Dutch thus far:

They mostly dress very casually; we’ve only seen a few ties here and there. They are actually quite a beautiful people as well as about the tallest, on average, in the world. It’s also rare to see anyone overweight. They do, after all, ride their bikes. A lot. Also, so far, other than a Burger King at the airport, we’ve only seen two McDonalds. That’s it, no other fast food anywhere. No Taco Bells, no KFC’s, no Carls Jrs… nada. See how easy it is to be so much smarter than Americans?

Speaking of which, we talked with our Uber driver and learned that in school they taught English, French, and German, although he said nowadays they’re down to maybe two of those. Still, it’s interesting that all you have to do is say a word or two and their incomprehensible Dutch turns into nearly flawless English immediately, and in very easy to understand and fluent English besides, without a lot of accent to it. He also told us they’re very blunt, which can sometimes be mistaken for rudeness. My impression is that they simply don’t feel the need to waste time with unnecessary verbal niceties.

Overall, I really like the Dutch. They have a live and let live attitude as exemplified by their liberal approach to social issues. It all works for them. They seem happy, and peaceful, and of course very bikey. Virtually every sidewalk we’ve walked on has a bike section to it. God forbid you linger too long in that section –as I have multiple times– for you’ll get run over in a heartbeat, or at the least have their little bells ding at you right before they would have if you hadn’t jumped out of the way. Even the motor scooters share the lane with the bikes, all of them going about the same speed. When you think of how many cars they’re keeping off the road, and how much exercise it gives them, well, it’s a model for any city out there. At least any flat city; the lack of hills is largely what makes it work.

On the left is for pedestrians, on the right for bikes. If you cross the street, you can’t stop and feel relieved for missing the cars, because you’ll be standing right in a bike line, and those will be on you faster than you can say Amsterholyhell.

Anyway, that’s all for today. We’re just gonna chill tonight I think.

Day two was mostly full of walking. We flew all the way to Amsterdam and boy are our feet sore. The Wyndham Apollo Hotel is about a fifteen minute walk from the area that has all the big museums, etc., and then it’s another 20 or 30 minutes to meander down to central Amsterdam where the Anne Frank House is located, among other things. Much of our trail probably would look a lot like the Family Circus routes whereby we wander to and fro, get a little lost, find something else, circle back around to the place we started even if that’s not where we wanted to be, and then eventually get where we were going, even if we didn’t know what that was in the first place.

After an easy breakfast at a bakery where we ordered something – not having the slightest idea as to what it was (it had powdered sugar on it, so we knew it couldn’t taste bad), our first destination was the obligatory Anne Frank House. I say obligatory not to downplay its significance: I’ve spent a lot of time learning about World War II, and Anne Frank offers us memories we should never forget. But it’s not something you go to and say, “wow, that was awesome!” In fact, the line of people waiting to get in was mostly somber and quiet, as it should be.

That said, the line was awful. I left Carolyn to walk down the row of it to see how long it would take to get in, and came back with the bad news that my guess was that it’d be an hour to two hour wait. We commiserated and ultimately decided not to wait in line for that long, no disrespect to Anne Frank’s memory intended. Next month they’re moving to a reservation-only system, which I think is very smart. Maybe we’ll be back someday and try it again using that. Meantime, at least we got to meet her statue:

And so after missing out on Anne we continued to meander through Amsterdam. We don’t have a ton of pictures because at some point it gets a little redundant. The architecture is awesome but it is pretty nearly all the same wherever you go. The canals are semi-romantic and kinda cool, depending on which one you look at, but again, pretty much all the same. I do wonder if anything alive exists in that water. Like a lot of in-city waterways, the water is pretty near black and looks like it would only support a creature from the black lagoon. A little bit of trash here and there floats about; not overly so, but if I fell into one I’d probably rush back to the hotel and hop in the shower and stay there for an hour while calling for antibiotics.

And of course there was the obligatory door for Carolyn. This one had once been a number seven, but the ivy decided to change that into an eight… it’s almost done.

After that, we went into one of the three main Royal Palaces they have and have mostly converted into a tourist attraction. Built in Amsterdam’s heyday, they’re massive and ornate and everything you’d expect a king to have when they had almost as much money and power as today’s American one percenters. Ha!

Some ornate churches…

One of which either got converted into a shopping center or they made a shopping center look like an old church, we weren’t entirely sure:

And, since we were down that way anyway, we decided to go to the obligatory Red Light District. I say obligatory not to downplay its significance: I’ve spent a lot of time learning about… uh… never mind. I’m being redundant, heh heh. Anyway, it’s only obligatory in that so many people think of it whenever you say the word “Amsterdam.” That and coffee/pot shops. Well, that and possibly, “What’s an Amster and why do they swear every time they say it?” But maybe that’s only me.

Anyway, as far as the excitement of the area, trust me. It ain’t no thang. It’s just a few blocks full of bars, paraphernalia sex shops, and hookers in underwear or bikinis (I didn’t stop long enough to inspect: I think most of us tend to look at them from the corner of our eye, not wanting to look too interested) in windows. Taking pictures of them is verboten, which is German for, “A big bouncer rushes up to throw your camera in the water if you try,” but I never saw anything remotely like that. Maybe it’s more prevalent at night, I dunno. Since it was in the afternoon and not so busy maybe we missed out on watching that kind of fun. Anyway, I couldn’t get Carolyn to give me fifty euros for fifteen minutes with a hooker from Czechoslovakia (actually I have no idea what the going rates are… or where they’re from. Speaking of which, some enterprising prostitute needs to put a “Sale! Today only!” sign in her window or some such. They all looked pretty bored, and I have to think the scantily clad babe in a window thing is marketing that has become a little tired and not so thrilling anymore), so we headed back to the hotel by using Uber, which went amazingly well, seeing as how we were picked up by a very nice man driving a Jaguar and avoided being shot because we weren’t in Kalamazoo.

By that time we were a little beat because we still haven’t completely adjusted to the time change difference. I had a helluva time sleeping all night, and so we got back to the hotel and plopped down for a nap. Six hours later, we woke up way past time for dinner. Hopefully this’ll be the night for adjusting fully to the time zone. If not, maybe we should’ve stopped in one of the coffee shops and bought some magic brownies to put us to sleep. But hey, we’re from Portland. That’d be like buying a Portland TrailBlazer hat in Amsterdam.

It’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles! (one of Kevin’s favorite movies ever):

• Flights : 6
• Countries: The Netherlands, France, England, Ireland, Portugal
• Main Cities: Amsterdam, Paris, London, Dublin, Lisbon
• Hotels: 4
• Apartments: 5
• Trains: 2
• Rental cars: 1

If it all works perfectly, it’ll be a minor miracle!

Day one: Portland to Amsterdam

It’s about a 9-1/2 hour non-stop flight from Portland to Amsterdam, or as I like to call it because this is a family website, Amsterdarnit. The route that takes the plane over Greenland and Iceland, where it was largely trouble-free with only a few bumps here and there. After a couple of movies and some reading and a few failed attempts at shut-eye (we were, after all, traveling all afternoon and into the evening, arriving at around 11 PM our time, which 8 AM Amsterdam time, meaning we started the day here with virtually no sleep– I know, I know, poor little us), suddenly we were in Holland! The Netherlands! Make up your mind! Why do you have two names? Amsterdammit!

We were fortunate enough to have enough air miles built up over the years to make it a First Class flight. Which meant mimosas in the morning and a seat that could lay flat for sleeping, plus videos galore and nice meals capped off with a hot fudge sundae. Yeah, we could get used to that.

After one of the longest airplane taxis we’ve ever experienced, going through customs and immigration was a breeze. No lines, no bag checks… almost like landing anywhere in the US. The Amsterdam airport is very modern and beautiful, although navigating the transportation to figure out the best way to get to our hotel made us glad we weren’t in a hurry (especially since I always look for alternatives to cabs).

Pretty much everyone you encounter speaks English, except perhaps tourists from Mississippi. Several encounters have started out in Dutch (which we can tell because of all the “AA’s” and a surprising amount of rolling r’s), which I view as a good thing because that means we don’t necessarily look like big ol’ dumb ‘Muricans, but as soon as you say, “Speak English you stupid Dutch person, can’t you see we’re civilized?” they switch to English right before they punch you in the mouth. Seriously, they switch gears without a hitch and are easy to understand, although the typical American politeness of apologizing for bumping you when they’re passing by gives way to what is probably a more typical European approach of, “I’m not going to acknowledge that because it was nothing to apologize for, you stupid simpering American weenie who needs constant affirmations from complete strangers.”

First impressions: As soon as we checked into our hotel and unpacked a little, we went on a walkabout to get a lay of the land and orient ourselves to our location. It’s a pretty city with lots of water. Canals everywhere.

But perhaps the identifiable aspect of the city are the bikes. Bicycles everywhere. And most of them look like the old three speed you had when you were a kid. Nothing fancy here, just two wheels and a couple of pedals. Virtually every sidewalk has a lane intended for both bicycles and scooters.

It takes a little getting used to especially when you cross a street. Just when you think you made it without getting hit by a car, you have to remember you’re now in the bike lane, and those suckers come fast. They know they have the right of way wherever they go, so they just zoom around like they’re in a Mario race, daring you to be one of the power ups they run into, except that you’d both lose instead of inheriting a new power.

Tulips and pretty flowers are abundant, as you might expect. We hope to go see some tulip farms and if we’re lucky, maybe some threelip farms later on during the visit.

Carolyn likes doors. Expect more pictures of doors.

After walking about, seeing that we’re not very far from “Museum Central” featuring the Can Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum, we found a little nondescript grocery store and bought some food for the room, which is one of our favorite ways to save money while traveling. We’re not sure if all downtown Amsterdam grocery stores are similar, but it felt more like a close-out discounter than a grocery store, with stuff piled pellmell in bins and not a lot of rhyme or reason to the layout (you have to admit, no one does in-store marketing like Americans). Still, some apples, salami, an aloe vera drink, some bread, chips, and cheese plus a very tasty prepackaged confection called “choco wafels” –which beats Li’l Debbie and Hostess all to hell in the yummy snack department– all for less than $10 US, pretty much feeds us for the night and maybe the morning. Yes, you can travel cheap in Europe if you’re not proud or picky.

During our walkabout we walked past a store window featuring a scantily-clad mannequin, oh wait, no that was no mannequin, that was a real live prostitute advertising herself in the window! (Does that mean I should have called it a womannequin?) Anyway, it wasn’t even the red light district, although it might’ve been on the border of it, we’re not sure. In the end, so what, who cares. We’re not in the market for a hooker so it was like passing a window display full of Dell Computers. Except maybe a little better looking and they probably don’t do Windows.

Anyway, so much of Amsterdam’s reputation at least in the US is: “hookers and pot.” We saw what might’ve been a pot shop and a couple of women in their underwear in the window, but otherwise, that’s not what this city is all about at all, any more than pot shops define or dominate Portland or Seattle.

So, after being up all night and wandering around the city getting our bearings, it’s back to the room for a nap. Hopefully we’ll be able to sleep through the night and wake up loaded for bear. We’re going to figure out our itinerary for the next three days and otherwise chill out and acclimate. Welcome to Holland, us!