S/V Tavarua

Some of the rainest, chilliest, stormiest weather this summer exists in Amsterdam. Quite a contrast to the heat wave of last summer. London says it has only seen the sun three times this month and it is having to use winter electrical monitoring plans because people are using their home heaters. And folks here in Amsterdam are complaining just as much.

We rented some bicycles and determined that is a much better way of seeing the city than on foot. We’ve survived the weather (sort of) and actually had a fine sunny afternoon yesterday. That is, survived, until the darkest, coldest thunderstorm came rolling in faster than a freight train around 6pm and lasted three drowning hours. The streets were howling and tossing all litter columns and whirlwinds into the air. The temperature dropped a good 15 degrees and lightening and thunder were pounding everywhere. Summer?! Yikes! We are still drying out our clothes from being caught in that storm.

We actually made it down to breakfast for the first time on our last morning at the hotel. A fine low-end spread but with all the fixings: rolls, salami, cheese slices, peanut butter, jelly, butter, granola, yogurt, luke-warm soft-boiled eggs, all served up with a push-the-button espresso machine and a boisterous two-year old that was putting more miles on patroling the lobby and pushing the door release button than we thought was humanly possible. It must have been the peanut butter combined with the salami. That’s a combination that will keep anyone moving.

With an hour or two to kill before needing to leave for the train station, we headed out into the brisk morning. Finally, Amsterdam was showing some clear skies and we appreciated every last moment of it. We ducked into a coffeeshop called ‘Homegrown Fantasy’, had some real espresso to let our tastebuds revoke the machine coffee experience, listen to some great ambient music, see if a cafe cat was around, and generally appreciate that Amsterdamian shopkeepers are actually up and smoking pot at 9 AM. No wonder everyone seems so calm in this city.

With a great sigh, we collected our bags and headed over to the train station. And with great goofy grins, we interacted with one of the passport photo booths and gathered 8 passport photos each. I doubt we will need that many, but a photo in the hand is worth hours of hunting for a photo booth in a land of bushes, eh?

The flight from London to Cairo on British Airways was absolutely packed. It is just under 5 hours long and they only fly once a day. We arrived in Cairo at 11 PM and a contact from our hotel came to pick us up, complete with a sign with our names on it. He was there in a suit with a long wool coat and his job was to get us planted into the passport control line, buy us two passport stamps (very much like colorful postage stamps), scoot us forward in the control line, scoot the girl on the cellphone ahead of us forward in line, help the girl remember her carry-on bag, rescoot the girl, rescoot all of us again, disappear for all of two minutes, return to wander like a madman amongst the baggage claim with my bag claim ticket in hand, climb through the baggage claim opening to talk to the crew in the back, return sighing and shaking his head, drag us over to the baggage missing line, pace like a madman while three people in front of us reported missing luggage on the same flight, recollect us after reporting my missing bag, walk us to Timbuktu past the paid parking lot and down a back alley road and finally… hand us off to the gentleman that would drive us to our hotel. With that completed, he flipped the paper with our names around on his very full clipboard to show the next passenger coming in on a KLM flight and bounded back into the airport. Needless to say, we were a bit overwhelmed by our intro to Cairo and it took a few minutes in the van to regain some understanding of the world that just whooshed by us.

Walking through the airport we saw a red carpet entry to a airline gangplank lined with a few police in spiffy uniforms with gold trim and machine guns, which we would soon consider a very normal sight in Cairo. There must be at least one policeman and/or traffic police per every ten Cairo citizens.

The passport control folks have a girl in the back of each booth and hold onto your passport until the number is written down in one of the infamous beaurocracy ledgers. They have quite a bit of surveying of your passport. (At least they let Derrell by without laughing at his picture as the control folks in Amsterdam did. Seems Derrell must have lost about 200 pounds to match his picture they joked. Y’know your day is getting seriously out of control when you are getting ribbed about having a fat looking passport photo. At least the photo booths allow you to pick your image, unlike the evil photographer that took our pictures at the AAA office back in Truckee. Do you think we could sue for emotional damages?)

The first few billboards of note on the 1 AM ride to our hotel were of Coca-Cola in Arabic and Nokia, also in Arabic except for the brand logo. The city was completely alive at 1 AM and we were soon to find that it doesn’t ever go to sleep. 3 and 4 AM and folks are out and about on the streets, doing who knows what.

Our driver informed us it would only take 2 days to teach us how to drive in Cairo. The first day would teach us to ignore the white lines on the road, and the second is to use your horn frequently. The driving is actually not as bad as we expected. There is some method to the madness. Almost all roads are one way streets, so as a pedestrian you only need to look one direction. There are traffic cops at many of the larger intersections, they take precedence over any street lights. Lights at night are completely optional and are available to flash as an alternative to your horn. Horn beeping means something like ‘I’ve got the ball, give me clearance.’ and the other drivers actually recede once a horn is blown. Instructions and directions can always be gotten from the driver flowing down the road next to you. A handy feature, but a bit more disruptive to navigating than say a talking GPS in a Toyota. Anyhow, regardless of the conformity within the seething Boston-like flow of cars, we both agreed that we won’t be driving in Cairo anytime in our lifetimes.

So, the travel day ends with my bag lost, Derrell’s found, and an extra to-do item to call the airport two days later in the morning (next flight that would have my bag is the same 11 PM arrival). We are currently considering how to reallocated all of our stuff in case of complete bag lositude. An idle thought, after the cat has been let out of the missing bag.

Oh, the joys of jet lag. Yawn.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful and the flight from Chicago to London had an unexpected bonus of getting bumped to Business class. The 777’s was a large fully loaded plane, and we figure at least half the load were young parents with squirming, whimpering kids. Nothing like getting bumped into the midst of bored travelers and out of the reach of tired tikes.

The Amsterdam weather has lived up to our expectation: rainy and blustery. We just missed the ground being covered with snow. The sidewalks are littered with soggy red firecracker wrappers and christmas trees set out for garbage pickup. Seems there must have been a New Year’s party here, eh?

Two friends met us here in the midst of their Paris vacation. They must have brought along good cat karma. They had a fine hotel cat that breezed through to check out that they were keeping their room in order. The karma cascaded, as we then noticed the coffeeshops all have resident cats. And the restaurants. And the bars. So overall we’ve conversed with a number of furry felines that were hiding out from the rain with us.

On the otherhand, our friends also brought odd bar karma. We ended up in a smoky Irish bar watching a dart match on tv. Something about having a tv on in a room can capture even the most robust talker’s attention, especially when it is as exciting a show as darts. We saw the continuation of the game later in the week, or maybe it was a replay. Oh, the intensity of sports these days. May I never get dart arm.

Amsterdam’s weirdness has also lived up to expections. Some guy is singing in the alleyway at the moment. Our hotel, Hotel Winston, is noisy until the 1 AM bars shutdown and each room decorated in haphazard funk. Our room has red velvet wallpaper, a lounge chair, photos on the wall from folks who have stayed there in the past. We found some SpaceCake and other oddities from the town to increase the weirdness factor. And we found a fine cafe for afternoon tea and biscotti. Nothing like weirdness in style.

With only a few hours on the road, the only thing we’ve lost is my $1 used clothing store coat. Someone in the London airport now has a fine wool jacket sitting in lost and found. And Derrell has donated his coat to me and will take days to defrost once we leave for Cairo tomorrow.

Alright, the one thing I left out on the previous entry was that I was coming down with a cold that morning. Not something I could ignore today. I sneezed my way through the Van Gough museum. The Rembrandt museum was closed for abestos evacuation. My opinion of Van Gough is that the boy drank too much absinthe. His paintings are much better in person than those you see as reprints on calenders.

From warm weather yesterday to rainy weather today. Our thoughts for the day were to eat some Amsterdam shrooms and sit in the park and watch the world go by. Well, that would be a bit of a wet sit. We considered wandering through the museums in that state, but decided that might be a bit slow and too quiet. Hmm…
Our hotel changed our room back over to the hotel this morning. And a fine hotel it is for the type of day we are considering. Hotel Filosoof. It has a gray-green animal pattern carpet that winds up the stairwell to our hallway. The numbers going down the hallway are in Alice-in-Wonderland style of different shapes and sizes. There are philosophical sayings scattered throughout the hotel on the walls. And at the end of the hallways is our room. It has shiny silver walls, with shimmering purple-blue drapes. A black velvet bedspread with a white satin underside. The carpet is deep purple and there is a fine chair that looks like it might get up and walk away from us. The bathroom is a cheerful yellow with a zen curtain and a great floor that is yellow stone with glittering purple and blue that brings the constrast of the two rooms together. The folks running the hotel are wandering around in their socks. What a great hotel.
So here goes our day.. the short version. Picked up some spaghetti sauce from the grocery store and some dark chocolate. Chopped up the raw (the smartshops only can sell fresh) mushrooms and mixed it in the sauce. Gads, the result was palatable only if you didn’t chew. Took a bite of some very dark chocolate. Stopped by a real coffeeshop for a double espresso. And wandered the town. You notice different things in this state, such as the bloopy tops of all the buildings. The town has left (I wish I had the correct architectural term for them) the iron tops and flags, spikes and swirls on top of the domes and buildings in the towns. It also has done some rather peculiar art work, such as placing bronze iquanas in the grass, and subtle faces on the bridges. We had a great walk and when the world started looking really weird, we stopped in a hologram shop that was playing ambient music. The owner was great and turned up the music for us and adjusted the lights in the store. We found our way over to a cafe and they too changed the music for us. What a cool town! From our perch, we watched the tourists flow by. Sitting by the window gave me a peculiar feeling of sitting on a boat watching the world flow by. It may have been the red lanterns in the cafe?

Derrell decided he needed new shoes and a different (smaller) pair of jeans. It was a gorgeous day and once the shops opened, the streets were swarmed with people. Did I mention that this was a holiday weekend?
Amazingly, the shoe and pants were purchased and we didn’t collapse from the pressure of the crowds.
Had a fine lunch at a Balinesian-Indonesian restaurant, sitting outside in the sun and watching the people go by.
So far we’ve stayed out of trouble, but that we knew that wouldn’t last for long. When in Amsterdam, do as the Romans do.. which is what the Amsterdamians do… We puchased (yes legally), some Columbian mushrooms. Thinking that might be a fine thing to do while wandering around the streets tomorrow.
Back to tourist watching. Just as in Brussels and Brugges, you can’t tell the tourists from the locals. I guess we have the Amsterdam local look, we were stopped twice by people thinking they could get directions from us. It must have been the new shoes.
The canals don’t smell here. They started a program to let 700,000 gallons of water flow through the canals each day to get rid of the stench. The city is extremely eco-friendly. There are bicycles everywhere and bike lanes. What a concept! If only Santa Cruz would put in actual bike lanes?! There is a downside as a pedestrian. You have to watch for trams, electric buses, taxis, a minor amount of cars, scooters, and erratically moving bicyclists. It can make crossing a busy intersection an adrenalin adventure.
They have one of the most heart stopping food obsessions here that I’ve ever seen. French fries, served with mayonaise are everywhere. In street stalls and on almost every restaurant menu. Our goal became eating at a restaurant that did not have french fries anywhere on the menu.
Our hotel is quite a haul from the main downtown. On one of our journeys to-from the hotel we stopped at an Irish pub (okay, it was the only place to sit down on the route.. I’m not really trying to search out places that serve Guiness instead of the lagers from hell that the serve here… really). We met Tiger the orange cat, who kept us entertained for our visit.
We stopped for dinner, but ended up with Tapas. Okay, Derrell didn’t end up with anything, but I got a great plate of pickled herring (never had that before, and probably won’t order it again until I forget what it tastes like.. but it certainly was something new to try) and some unidentifiable fried fish (good but non-descript after the lovely pickled herring). Okay, maybe three beers impairs your eating judgement. We sat outside the tapas bar and eavesdropped on a young-republican-Netherlander picking up a young American girl by lauding his great travel experience as a cpa. We were a bit suspicious, but it may have been working for the girl. Actually, it was probably just his accent.
We wandered back over the red light district to watch the crowds and get in more trouble. Had quite a memorable evening, but added a haze from buying some (yes legal) joints from the coffeeshop. We stayed out until the bars closed and had better judgement than the two guys sitting next to us who had decided to eat some shrooms for the first time ever just as the town was thinking of closing up for the evening. We gave them the basic tenents: 1) All cars are real (and trams and bicycles) 2) Don’t stare at the sun and 3) Don’t eat your food if it talks to you. Seems like rational advice for everyone, actually.

Bus to the train station - easy
Train to Antwerp - easy
Train transfer - easy
Amsterdam tram to hotel stop - easy
Finding the hotel - uh-oh

Seems the exact hotel street is not on our map. We asked at a Pastry shop, they pulled out the city atlas. Nope, not listed in the index. We asked at a pub. They had heard of the hotel, it is somewhere in ‘that’ direction. We asked at a restaurant closer, nope don’t know where it is. Finally, after about 45 minutes of wandering aimlessly down very long blocks, we found it.
The hotel bumped us over to a 5th story apartment, complete with washing machine and kitchen. Seems they overbooked. I can’t say I was thrilled with the steep climb or not being in the main hotel, but the apartment was decent and quiet. We could see a horse corral from the window. An odd sight in the middle of a city.
We headed out for the early evening and had an excellent meal at an Indian restaurant. Amsterdam has a huge number of ethnic restaurants. We figured we could eat our way around the city for at least a month.
Wandered around and ended up in the Red Light district. It is a holiday weekend, so even more people were out than usual. Watched the young girls-prostitutes in the windows doing business. The going rate is 50 Euros for 20 minutes. The clientelle looked mostly in their 20’s and 30’s, and left the doorways with ridiculous grins on their faces. Went to a live sex show that was the epitome of silly. Banana dances and dragging audience men up onto the stage to tease. The audience was more fun to watch than show, since this is the touristy risque show to attend. Watch out for the pink elephant as you leave, as it spouts out water across the walkway on tourists wandering through.