AnnaDoesAmsterdam

I Survived Amsterdam - Budapest and the Last Hoorah!

2010-02-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

My last few days in Amsterdam were exciting... First, Jesse and Lauren came back to town for American Thanksgiving, then Jesse and I took off to Budapest for a few days. The city was very festive, whit white lights being the dominant Christmas decoration.

There were also a few Christmas markets, and each made a delicious roasted dough treat, covered in coconut, nuts or cinnamon mmm....

Budapest also has a coffeeshop chain called Anna, with a logo surprisingly similar to Starbucks. Those crazy Eastern Europeans and their trademark infringement.

We went to a ruin pub, which is similar to Amsterdam's squat scene. This one had two street front entrances, one house apart, with the two buildings connecting only through the underground.

We spent most of our time on the Pest side where our friend and my former roommate Ada lives, but this picture of the Hungarian Parliament was taken from the Buda side.

We took a tour of the Parliament building as well. This model was made entirely out of toothpicks by a Hungarian family. The model was too big to fit through their house door, so a wall had to be removed. As a "thank you" for the model, the family was given a new house.

When smoking was allowed in the Parliament building, the politicians would leave their cigars in these numbered holders before entering the chamber. The quality of a speaker was measured by how much cigars burned out during his speach.

Jesse and me back on the Buda side.

Budapest also has some outdoor thermal baths. It was amazing to swim outside on a December night. The steaming water and marble statues made it feel like an ancient Roman bath or like I was a movie star.

Ada and me at the baths' entrance.

My last hours in Amsterdam... Jesse, Gijs, parties and mushroom lamps.
I'm writing this from Canada, which means I survived Amsterdam. I also managed to keep this blog going for 3.5 years, much longer than anyone managed to keep up with. Still, it's a personal best. It was amazing and I'm sure I'll be back, but for now I'm marveling at how friendly Canadians are. It never seizes to amaze me.

Dinosaur Drama - September 19, 2009

2009-11-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

At the end of September, we returned to Nijkerk one more time for Rick's (and his bro's and dad's) going away party. They were setting of for a 3 month long road trip through Africa, so this was the last chance to get everyone together.

The next morning we had some beautiful weather, so we took a trip to the zoo in Amersfoort. This zoo is much bigger than the one in Amsterdam, and also cooler, because it has dinosaurs.

On their first day in Africa, they had some car problems. The dinosaurs probably got in the way.

Dutch Wedding - September 2009

2009-11-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

Rick and I were invited to a hippie wedding that took place in Nijkerk, the town Rick is from. The bride and groom were old family friends, and the wedding took place in Rick's (childhood) home's yard. Rick's dad did the ceremony - he and the property were granted permission to do it on one night.

There was a food tent, dance tent and booze tent. They also had an arts station set up where you could paint (I painted a mushroom), and a bouncy castle.

The next morning not a trace of the party remained; Rick's house in the background.
Back in Amsterdam, an elephant invasion was taking place. This square is called Spui, and I now live in Rick's house, which is behind the row of houses in the background.

I'm 26 in Malta!

2009-11-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

I celebrated by 26th Birthday with a small group of friends in Sucre, a restaurant specializing in deserts. We had a small main course followed by an assortment of deserts, which was then followed by a proper birthday cake. The evening was awesome, and when we got home, Rick and I had only a couple of hours to set off for the airport for our vacation in Malta! It sucked having to catch a 4am flight, but the fact that it was my birthday gift and a vacation all in one made it awesome.

Things in Malta were off to a rough start; we got there too early to check into our room so we napped by the pool, and worse still, Rick's luggage was lost so he was stuck in black clothing in the sweltering heat all day long. We were finally able to check into our room, and they did find his bag that day, so it all worked out in the end.

We were staying in St. Julian's Bay, and went out for lunch on that first, exhausting day. Most of the restaurants we ate at were located in this area overlooking Spinola Bay. The bay was full of Malta's famous, colorful fishing boats, and these are the docks.

St. Julian's Bay - downtown

Day 2
We decided to take it easy easy, swimming in St. Julian's bay and having dinner at a nice restaurant. The city was pretty busy, but we had easy access to a small rocky beach with crystal clear water and a sandy bottom.

Day 3
This day kind of sucked. We took a boat trip to the north coast of Malta to see the famous Blue Lagoon. The boat, however, was over crowded, hot, and full of miserable people. The Blue Lagoon was also packed, and I got stung by a jelly fish.

On the way to the Blue Lagoon we passed the Popeye movie set; the film was shot here in 1980.

The famous Blue Lagoon. It is, indeed, blue.

Passing the capital Valletta on the way back to the docks at Sliema (only a 10 minute bus ride from St. Julians). Valletta has a very distinct skyline, and the next day we even visited that domed church.

Day 3
In the morning we jumped on one of the country's famous (and old and doorless) buses and headed back to Sliema to catch the (equally old) ferry that would take us to Valletta.

Valletta was a very hilly city, which is something I wasn't expecting, and was a nice change after flat Holland.

Standing on Valletta's city gates, overlooking the main square.

Official palace.

This is the country's main bus terminal just outside Valletta's gates. The country is very small so it's easy to get around.

Outside St. John's Co-Cathedral. Malta was in its Festa (Saint's Feast Day) season when we were there, so each city had many statues of patron saints and bright decorations.

These red banners are also Festa related.

Inside St. John's Co-Cathedral. I'm not a big fan of churches, but this was truly impressive.

After wards we decided to grab lunch at this cute cafe I found in my guidebook. Rick's mom owns a restaurant in Holland and was inspired by this photo to create a similar set up at her place.

Inside the Church of Mount Carmel, the famous dome that dominates Valletta's skyline. It was destroyed during the war, and the interior is now very bare; the emptiness was impressive.

Valletta's famous balconies were everywhere; green was a popular color.

Malta is a very religious country, with statues of saints on many corners and buildings. Malta also has many seemingly unsafe construction rigs.

Located across from Valletta's grand harbor are three peninsulas. They are all one urban mass, but each peninsula is actually a separate city: Senglea, Cospicua and Vittoriosa. We took one of these small traditional racing boats on a tour of the harbor and to Vittoriosa.

Vittoriosa is famous for its defense system...

Vittoriosa was a small, quite town, so after a couple of hours we were done exploring. We jumped on a bus back to Valletta (all buses in Malta travel through Valletta), and instead of going straight back to St. Julians, we decided to have dinner in the capital first. We ended up on a roof-top restaurant, overlooking Fort St. Elmo and the three cities, right before sunset. The timing was perfect and we couldn't have planned it better if we tried. It was good Karma making up for the crappy boat trip from the day before.

Day 4
We had made reservations weeks ahead of time to visit the Hypogeum Hal-Saflieni, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world. Entrance is restricted to 10 people per hour, so booking ahead was essential, and you're not allowed to take pictures inside. They're doing their best to preserve the temple, but that wasn't always the case...
The Hypogeum was first discovered by construction workers in 1902, who were building 4 houses on the street above it. When they discovered the temple they first tried to hide it by building over it, but it was eventually found. Today the buildings above it act as a museum about the Hypogeum and the tourist entrance to the temple, and you can still see the remainder of the original house in the form of tiles at the entrance to the ancient crypt. Because of this fiasco, you would never actually know you were standing in front of an ancient temple because it looks like any other street in the town. We had some problems finding it, but people are very friendly and offer help when they see you standing with a map. This is the neighborhood the Hypogeum is in.

In Malta, no one has sex.

Malta has many Megalithic temples; these are the Tarxien Temples from 2800BC. They were just walking distance from the Hypogeum so we decided to check them out, but the complex was rather unimpressive compared to other temples in the world (i.e. Libya).

Back in St. Julians - in the background you can see the church and building we saw from our hotel room. We also spent a lot of time in the water in front of the church.

Did I mention Malta is very religious?

Spinola Bay from a different angle. In the background you can see all the restaurants we tried over the course of the week.

Day 5
Mdina is the old capital of Malta, frequently called the "silent city". It was very pretty and a great place to walk around; the famous Maltese glass comes from Mdina so we did some souvenir shopping here.

The village outside Mdina's walls is known as Rabat, which is derived from the Semitic word "suburb", as it was once the suburb of the old capital. This area was practically deserted and the only reason we were here was to visit St. Paul's Catacombs.

We eventually found the tombs and they were very impressive. Not only were there very few people present, it was also a huge, never ending complex of tunnels you could get lost in. At one point we used our camera flashes to get in deeper, which was quite creepy.

Malta is a world-leader in fireworks, and we were lucky to be there during the local Festas, which frequently end in a big fireworks display (Malta is so small we could hear a different town's fireworks each night from our hotel). The village of Lija is famous for its fireworks (it even has the country's main factory), and we were lucky to be in Malta on August 5th when they celebrated their Festa. Not only did the town look amazing, they also put on a great hour long fireworks display.

After the fireworks, there was a show of spinning fire crackers. No safety precautions in place, you could get very close to the poles of flaming, spinning fire crackers... At one point we had to run from the smoke and fizzle.

Day 6
We booked a day trip to Gozo, the island north of Malta. The capital of Gozo is Victoria.

The most noticeable difference between Malta and Gozo were the gray buses, instead of Maltese yellow.

Knight's Baths

The famous Azure Window...
... and surrounding salt pans.

The Ggantija temples are the main reason to visit Gozo; they are the oldest man made structures in the world, dating from 3600BC. Some believe that Malta is the lost continent of Atlantis, and I agree with these theories. A long time ago Malta wasn't an island at all but was connected to the main land at Italy. When the water levels changed, Malta became an island and to those who stayed on the main land, it would appear as if the entire "continent" sank. Malta is a very small island with a high concentration of these Neolithic temples, and temples are generally built on elevations such as mountain tops to bring them closer to the gods. Therefore, it's logical to assume that current Malta is just the peak of the mountains of an old Atlantis where all the temples were built...

And that's it! The next day we flew back to Amsterdam, but I'm very impressed by how much we were able to see and how much time we also had to relax in clear waters, eat at good restaurants, and enjoy sunny weather.

Dance Valley - July 11, 2009

2009-11-23T12:20:00.000-08:00

The last festival of the summer was a one day dance event in Holland called Dance Valley. It was also Lauren's birthday and going-away party, so we made sure it was magical. We even had wands, which were very useful for beating people with to claim our dance turf.

Big mushroom awesomeness!
The festival had a surprising amount of fun random stuff...

Whack with the wand.

We were there till the every end, because that's when they bring on the LASERS!

Sam and Anna Do Amsterdam - Part 2

2009-11-22T12:29:00.000-08:00

Sam came back for another visit, but this time she wasn't able to stay with me because I live with a cat and she's terribly allergic. Instead we went for a walk around the city and she saw my building from the outside. It's the top 3 windows and roof lights in the pink building.

Sam on the other end of my street.

Sam was in town over July 4th, so we decided to celebrate the American holiday by going to Sensation White, a themed party where everyone dresses in white. It was fun, but totally over-rated. The old, cracked-out crowd was also a bit much, so it's not something I'll be going to in the future. Still, we had fun.

Glastonbury 2008: June 24-28

2009-11-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

Lauren, David and I made the trip to Glastonbury, the Mecca of all festivals, by bus. We thought it would be a good idea to take an overnight bus on Monday so we'd be in London on Tuesday morning, with one full day to explore the city before heading for the field of Rock. The bus ride was a terrible idea, and included a 2 hour stint at the border. Still, all's well that ends well (even though this was just the beginning of the journey), and we made it to London. From there on it was smooth sailing!

Proof that we made it: Buckingham Palace

And another official building, complete with British guards and the London Eye in the background
Trafalgar Square - I've been to all these places before

Outside what appeared to be the Canadian embassy, there was a photo shoot. It was a lot of fun to watch, especially the difference in the model as she posed and how she was between takes.

Piccadilly, in search of Pizza Hut :) We made it to the Hut in the end!

While Lauren went to her hair appointment, David and I checked out the Movieum. It really sucked, except for the Darth Vader. All the cool futuristic buttons on the belt were made of garden hose.

Big Ben!

Just in case you didn't notice, you should STAND ON THE RIGHT!!!!! The constant onslaught of sights and sounds telling you what you can and can't do, what you should mind, and where you should stand drove me crazy! I can't block that shit out and it drives me insane, but it was especially difficult coming from a non-English speaking country where it's easy to block out what's going on around you (I like not speaking Dutch because I don't have to listen to people's stupid conversations). I am also excellent proof that no matter how many signs and warnings you give, people will still do something stupid! Even though they tell me which way I should look when crossing the street in London, there's at least one close call between me and a truck each time I go. The stupid warnings and the driving on the left are the main reasons I couldn't live in London.

Carnaby Street had lots of nice cafes and cute shops, so we chilled out a bit before heading out to dinner - our final decent meal for days to come!

We left for Glastonbury on Wednesday morning, and after being stuck in traffic we finally had our tent pitched in the afternoon. After that, we hit the festival grounds to explore. The bands didn't start performing until Thursday, but Glastonbury has so much going on that it was nice to walk around and check it all out before it got muddy and over-crowded with drunk people.

Frolicking.

These guys were awesome; what they're wearing is called a morph suit, and I want one.

Glastonbury is a huge festival; with 250 000 people it's like festival city, complete with all sorts of food and shopping. We saw some quality festival fashion on day one...

On the way to the festival I saw a guy with a flower hat on the bus and was jealous. I got my own at Glastonbury, and it's even better. Dress was purchased at Pinkpop.

This picture was taken from our tent. In the background you can see the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury's famous main stage. What I liked most about Glastonbury was that the camping and festival site was one huge area - other festivals have separate camping and festival sites.

The sun is setting over the donut.

The music started on Thursday afternoon, so we had more time to explore. There's so much going on at Glastonbury that you feel like the festival is an entity of its own, and the bands just happen to be there as well. My favorite were all the random art installations and statues.

The area of Shangri-La was all about wicker stuff...

The entrance to Arcadia had big eye-ball trees...

The dragon overlooking the festival from the tranquil Stone Circle. You can see tents way at the other end of the festival site, which was huge. It could take well over an hour to walk from one end of the festival to the other, especially in all the crowds.
David bought weed from a 14 year old on this hill - odd. The kid was telling us how they got arrested, and then their parents bailed them out and brought them back to the festival.

There was a reading lounge where you could pick up a newspaper and chill, so we decided to hide here from the brief rain.

Random stages with even more random people were all over the place

This green lobster thing is a huge set of speakers on a truck playing minimal.

The same statue as before, but at night.

The first band we saw was Kap Bambino on Thursday night. They were loud and flashy and a lot of fun.

When we were walking back to the tent on Thursday night we heard a weird murmur through the crowd: "Michael Jackson's dead". It was eerie how you heard it everywhere - even though no one was saying it with certainty, I think everyone knew it was true. Australian David actually thought Jackson's father was at the festival and that people were saying "Michael Jackson's dad". The next morning we went back to the newspaper tent to pick up a copy of the paper and see if it was true; there was a massive queue for the paper so we immediately knew that it was.

It was very sad to hear of his death, and kind of ironic that it happened during Glastonbury. A lot of artists, including Spinal Tap and Lady Gaga, dedicated songs to him. "Without Michael Jackson, there wouldn't be Spinal Tap" said the singer. It was kind of beautiful how even at the opposite end of the world, in the middle of the night, 250 000 people living in tents, intentionally isolated from technology and civilization, would hear about Michael Jackson's death and talk about it within hours. It did put a downer on the festival; thank god for lobsters.

Lauren and I bought inflatable lobster chairs for Glastonbury, and we whipped them out by Friday. It was the best idea ever - with people constantly wanting to buy them from us.

Lady Gaga: best performance of the entire festival. For one song she stood on the piano bench, legs crossed and bent over, playing the piano. She was wearing massive stilettos too.

New festival fashion: Pinkpop skirt and Glasto sweatshirt

My favorite area at the festival was Trash City. We were relaxing on the grass when this guy showed up.

Metric!

Yet another random festival stage, this one with a spider disco ball.

More Trash City... The lobsters were great because they also made it really easy to find each other in a crowd. We didn't get lost once.

Acrobats

The Klaxons played a great set, dressed up as Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and the headless man. The roadies were dressed as characters from the Wizard of Oz.

Hippie corner

During Dirty Vegas some guy proposed to his girlfriend; best proposal ever.

Sunday night was the last night, and even though Blur headlined the main Pyramid Stage, we decided to stay at the Other Stage and catch the Prodigy. We saw a log of great bands, but the highlights for me were Lady Gaga, Prodigy, Metric, Klaxons, Bloc Party, White Lies and Franz Ferdinand. There were definitely more great bands playing, but with so much going on we didn't make it to all of them. Monday morning we quickly got our stuff together, jumped on the bus and headed for the airport. BEST FESTIVAL EVER!!!

A Scottish Wedding: June 11-14 2009

2009-11-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Elysia, Allan and I were invited to the wedding of a friend from the early Amsterdam days, who had moved back to Scotland, met a girl, and got engaged. We flew in a few days early, with dates, and got to stay in Allan's village, Findochty. We also got to meet Allan's parents, which was cool, and his pets, including Tony the Tortoise!

Tony was brought over to Scotland from Africa by Allan's grandfather as a souvenir. He survived WWII in London, and now lives in Allan's back yard in the summer, and hibernates in the shed in the winter. This tortoise has been through a lot, including being run over with a lawnmower (by Allan); his cracked shell was fixed by Alan's dad with some plaster. Tony the tortoise' name alternates between Tony and Toni, as it's debated whether it's a boy or a girl.

From left to right: Tony, Rick, Misty - in Allan's backyard.

Findochty is located on the north coast of Scotland, with beautiful scenery and hiking all around.

In the background you can see Allan's village. Sanja was invited to the wedding as Allan's date, and it's funny we all ended up together considering I met Sanja two years earlier: first at Elysia's Thanksgiving dinner and then (by coincidence) when she moved into my apartment. Sanja met Allan over a year later and they started dating. If that's not enough, Mark and Rick are best friends, so it's a tight group.

We started our hike in one of the nearby villages...

And a few hours later arrived at castle ruins.
View from the top of the castle.

In front of Allan's house

And more pictures of Findochty. It's so far north that it never got pitch black; you could always see light on the horizon even after the sun had set.

The wedding was held in Aberdeen, so we drove back and got ready at the hotel where we sould spend the night after the wedding.

Brian (Scottish friend and part of the Allan/Chris trinity from Amsterdam), Anna (his date), Rick, me, Mark, Elysia, Sanja, Allan

And our friend the groom, Chris, with his new wife Miriam.

The bride took a double decker bus from the wedding to the party...

And the guests got another bus. As you can see I'm dating a giant.

Pinkpop 2009: May 30 - June 1

2009-11-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

David and I went to Pinkpop, a festival in the Netherlands. It's the longest running festival and it was held over a national holiday, so we really didn't have a reason not to go, and I was curious to see just why it's been around for so long. The line-up wasn't great and it was held in a very industrialized area, so the concrete didn't help in creating a festival atmosphere. The crowd was also very tame, so it felt more like a series of outdoor concerts than a proper festival. I guess it's because of fact that it's such an old festival (this was the 40th), so a lot of the people that came when they were young (and fun) were now coming back much older (and with kids).

Still, we managed to have fun. We were on the platform right in front of the screen during Placebo, partying hard. People thought we were crazy, and when we turned around we had thousands of people staring back at us; we were total Rock Stars.

The festival did have some good bands though, including Canadian reps Billy Talent...

And one of the highlights Franz Ferdinand! The shopping was very good at this one though, including a whole new skirt/Maya the Bee t-shirt combo.

Queen's Night and Day - April 29 & 30, 2009

2009-11-22T04:33:00.000-08:00

I think you all know the drill by now: drunk people in orange all over the city. On Queen's Night we did another boat trip, and it was awesome. Another year without anyone falling in the water though...

On Queen's Day we wandered around the city. This year a lot of people were living in the city center, so we were able to go apartment hopping. This is David's place right in the Red Light District.

Orange - check. Alcohol - check. Wandering - check.

When we got to Lauren's place we needed a tinkle break so we decided to go inside. We were a big group of about 10, and two random strangers followed us in looking for the toilet. Did they think we wouldn't notice?

This Queen's Day we didn't make it more than 1km from our starting point, and ended up jumping a fence and hanging out in a playground with all the mayhem around us.

Dad's Visit: April 1-20, 2009

2009-11-22T04:06:00.000-08:00

Finally, my dad made it over the pond for a visit. He arrived early on Saturday morning, and after spending a day lounging around Amsterdam, we started our busy week of sightseeing. He was in Amsterdam over Easter, which was nice because normally I don't even notice that holiday; I guess it's because there's no point to it without family.

We took a trip to Rotterdam and did a boat tour of the harbor and all the shipping containers...

From earlier posts you already know Rotterdam is a major port city
On the way back from Rotterdam our train stopped in the Hague, so we decided to get off and take a look around. These are the Royal buildings and the International Court of Justice is also in the area.

Where's the bike?

My dad was fascinated by my house, and rightfully so. This is my room...

And the kitchen below it.

We spent some time exploring Amsterdam as well, and it was nice to finally climb a tower and get a bird's eye view of the city - something I've never done before. This is taken from the Zuiderkerk (Southern Church).

From the tower we headed to the to the reconstructed VOC ship Amsterdam - it sunk on its maiden voyage.

And of course the Red Light District. You're not allowed to take pictures but we were sneaky with this one.

We also took a trip to Keukenhof, and the tulips were in full bloom.

Back in Amsterdam, more exploring. We had freakishly nice weather all week long.

On the Houseboat Museum...

One evening we also visited Haarlem, the capital of North Holland. It's a small town so was a nice contrast with all the cities we visited.

And no trip to Amsterdam is complete without a Paap boat trip. My friends joined as well, so we had a lot of fun. My future boyfriend was even on board so it was funny that he got to meet my dad.

Squat house and garden on the water.

The famous Seven Bridges.

Pillow Fights and Robots

2009-11-22T03:37:00.000-08:00

Saturday April 4 was international Pillow Fight Day - this is the Amsterdam Chapter. Look close enough and you'll find me!

After the pillow carnage we jumped on a train and headed to Eindhoven for the STRP Festival, a festival on art and technology. Squarepusher and Aphex Twin performed, and during the gig they had big text bubbles in the crowd that were connected to a wireless keyboard which transmitted the text. I was inspired by my Scottish friends from the week before.

This guy was a solo performer with an electric guitar, a bunch of pedals, an amp, and a gas mask.

There were also screens with movies, videos and crazy music all night long. The highlight was a white, bright, smoke filled tent with strobe lights and distortion on loop. After a few minutes you trip out and can see with your eyes open what you normally see with your eyes closed.

Scotland Invades - March 2009

2009-11-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

Scottish soccer fans are the most enthusiastic in the world, frequently traveling to watch their team play. 80 000 Scottish descended on Amsterdam for a Scotland vs. Holland game, and gathered in Dam Square for a day of pre-game/all weekend long drinking. Maybe their military sent in 80 000 undercover troops to gather intelligence for a future take-over?

Scottish fans' dedication runs beyond mere traveling and extends to grooming as well:

We made friends quickly. These guys gave me beer, fed me KFC, and sang a song about me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgj51s3PcGc

The place was full of "characters"... This one peed on the police truck.

In all the chaos we managed to get away with a chair, which was useful as we were very tired after a whole day of drinking.

And finally, we were able to answer one of life's biggest mysteries: What do the Scottish wear under their kilts?

Ski Trip #3 - March 2009

2009-11-18T03:18:00.000-08:00

Skiing in Europe is amazing, so this year the expats made a week long ski adventure to Les Trois Valees in the French Alps. We stayed in the town Les Menuires which was at 1850m altitude. The apartments in the touristy valley aren't impressive, but the mountains are incredible; you can't even see the peak from this spot.

It would take at least a couple lifts to get to the top...

We could see Mont Blanc in the distance.

The apartments were small but cozy, and we managed to cook dinner and eat all together a couple of nights. Left to right: Amelie (FR), Thijs (NL), Dani (SP), Tom (GB), Angeline (FR), Diego (IT) and missing from this pic is the photographer David (AUS).

We also had a few grocery stores in the area, where they sold snails and shells separately. Is this so you can put the snails back in the shell before serving? Seems highly counter-productive... But hey, it's French.

I lived with these three dudes... Tom, Andreas, David.

We also went out for dinner a few times, and one night we tried Raclette. It's kind of like Fondue... Here you can see the hunk of cheese between the heater, and when it melts you scrape it off onto meat or potatoes. It was very good, and heavy. One night I also had ostrich steak at a restaurant and it was delicious.

But best of all was the skiing, and these amazing mountains everywhere you looked!

Czech Republic - February 2009

2009-11-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

The expats decided to do a weekend in Prague, which was great as it was the first time we traveled together since the summer. The trip went extremely well, despite the fact that it started with us forgetting one of our own at the airport. We had a group of 13, so we implemented a buddy system right then and there and luckily avoided future drama. We stayed at the edge of the historic city center near Charles' Bridge, and each day we got to walk by weird baby art to get to it.

I forgot to mention the penguin art.

On the famous Charles' Bridge, and in the background you can see the castle. Lots of shitty music videos, including AFI's "Girls Not Grey" and I'm pretty sure something by Linkin Park were shot on this bridge.

On the flight to Prague Allan noted that "if the plane goes down we'll lose the elite of each nation". Wise words.

The ladies of the group.
A view of Prague from the hill as we climbed to the Castle.

The castle complex, and in the background the church where we saw a Classical concert.

Church interior during the concert; the acoustics were amazing.

At the end of the day we had dinner at a restaurant that was located under Charles' Bridge.
From there we hit the clubs. Kross Club was amazing; it was like being inside a machine, with many moving parts and lights and loud techno music. Plus the place was like a maze, full of doorways, stairwells and narrow hallways, so it was very easy to get lost. One room had suspended car seats and was playing the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, with the local nutcase on hand to recite it word for word. Alcohol and drug consumption were done cafeteria-style,while I managed to attract the craziest of the crazies. Luckily we had two dudes on hand to curb his enthusiasm.

I'm related to the guy in the white shirt and hat. He's my second cousin Adam and I met him for the first time on this trip. He lives in Prague and it was nice to have a guide show us where all the cool clubs are. This was the Roxy and was more mainstream than Kross CLub.

After a ridiculous night out we had to wake up early and check out of our beautiful apartment - the staircase was all marble. I doubt I'll ever actually live in an apartment like this, but it was cool to stay in one even for a weekend.

After checking out we still had some time to wander the city. The famous main square...

The church with its famous towers, one of which burned down and was rebuilt in a different size from the original (don't remember which is which though). It's cool how this church is right behind a row of houses.

And Prague's famous clock. It does a little dance every hour and people crowd around to see it. It's quite funny to watch the crowd as the show is rather underwhelming. Though considering how old and sophisticated it is, it is quite impressive.
And in the background the famous Charles Bridge with the castle overlooking the city.

On Sunday all the expats went back to Amsterdam while I met up with more relatives and went to the mountain town of Sumperk where they live.

Funnily enough, I was on this street years ago with my dad, not aware of the fact that I had relatives who lived near by. It's such a random street and I never thought I would back there visiting people I'm related to. I have a picture here from both visits.

This part of the country is famous for its high quality paper production, so we went to a paper mill. It was closed to visitors but the cleaning staff left a door open so we snuck in for a few minutes.

A castle complex in the area. Also closed but the courtyard was open, and there was a dog running around, so I had a great time.

And after a couple of days in the quite town surrounded by beautiful snow, it was time to head back to Prague and fly to Amsterdam. We passed through a train station with a very cool statue of King Wenceslas.

Canadian Christmas 2008

2009-11-16T13:04:00.000-08:00

After two Christmases abroad in a row, it was nice to be home. Crazy parties in Copenhagen and Amsterdam were cool, but it was great to be in a big house with a real Christmas tree and family to be around. Being home for Christmas also reminded me of all the things that Amsterdam lacks during the holidays.

#1 Well planned out Christmas decorations. In the background you can see a tree decorated with Swarowski crystals so it sparkled from afar. In Amsterdam, I saw two trees. The first was in Dam Square in front of the Royal Palace. Unfortunately they ran out of blue lights half way, so half the tree was blue and the rest white. In Nieuwmarkt half the tree died, so there was a big hole in it. In this picture you can also see Santa in his sleigh. In Amsterdam Sinter has black helpers who are black from the smoke in the chimneys; just because they have big lips, curly black hair and gold hoop earings doesn't mean they're slaves!

Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto's Times Square. Again, awesome decorations.

Stores also put more effort into their displays.

#2 Friendly people. Toronto City Hall on New Years Eve 2008. You may recognize the building from Resident Evil 2, in which it's blown up. Despite the crowd, people remain friendly - a rare phenomenon in Amsterdam (friendliness I mean, not crowds).

#3 The weather? Amsterdam has fairly warm but rainy and windy winters. Canada has damn cold winders. I still haven't decided which is better. The frozen trees at Niagara Falls were beautiful. But if the trees are frozen, it's freakin cold.

Back to point 1, awesome decorations. These were at Niagara Falls.

Even back home I do the touristy stuff. What can I say, it's in my blood.

Burlington, a suburb of Toronto, but even they make an effort.

Zoutsteeg 26: September 2008 - September 2009

2009-11-16T12:44:00.000-08:00

My street is called Zoutsteeg or "Salt Alley", probably because it's walking distance from Centraal Station (the old port of the city) and this would be where they salted all the fish. The house is from the 17th Century and has now become one of Amsterdam's many leaning houses; it shakes when the morning cleaning trucks roll around and you wonder when the place will collapse. We were in the attic, so we had a cool view of roof tops, and in the background the Westerkerk (the church that's next to Anne Frank's house).

Because we were in the attic we had roof support beams running through our living room...

Which were perfect for a hammock. Hanging out in a hammock in your own living room is awesome. In the background you can see the kitchen on the left, and my room above it. It was a shelf, but my shelf.

Zoutsteeg by night.

Work Travels - October 2008

2009-11-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wondered what I do for a living, I ride around on giant turtles at the World of Warcraft World Championships. The event was in Paris, so it was very cool that I got to do more traveling with work.

Here's proof...

I've been to Paris before, and even visited Montmartre then. But I never thought that years later I'd be back in the same spot, doing a scavenger hunt with a bunch co-workers.

Autumn in Amsterdam sucks; it rains and the leaves rot and fall to the ground. However, the colors of the vineyards on Montmartre were beautiful.
Just an average cafe, but please note the random space invaders mosaic

Shortly after returning to Amsterdam, we took another company trip to a huge toy fair in Essen Germany. I got to walk around and spy on other games; the most impressive display were the giant games. Awesome.

Moving - Anna Style

2009-11-04T10:28:00.001-08:00

Step 1 - Throw garbage bags full of clothes from 4th floor window

2 - Have the police show up

3. Sleep it off

Luckily my friend/then roommate David was on hand to take pictures, because now I can look back on this experience and laugh. When I came back to work after my move everyone kept asking "How did the move go?" Without thinking I gave the default answer, "Fine", because at the end of the day I succeeded in moving my things from Point A: Van Bossesstraat to point B: Zoutsteeg. In reality it was the worst move ever. Let me break it down...

The movers never showed up. I kind of worried this could happen because I live in Holland, and that's how things are done here. But when it actually happened, even though I wasn't totally shocked, I was super pissed. I desperately called a bunch of moving companies; all of them were booked. At one of them I reached a very nice lady (of course she wasn't Dutch), and she gave me the number of a man with a van. Luckily the guy had enough time to squeeze me in if all my stuff was ready to go and we could manage in one trip. Disaster averted.

Next I had to get my stuff downstairs, fast, and with no movers to help. I lived on the 4th floor and carrying bags of clothing down the stairs was too much work - so I stuffed them in garbage bags and tossed them out the window. David was downstairs spotting to make sure it went well.

Now that my stuff was all on the street the movers never showed up, but the police did. My psycho-bitch neighbor (I've had many encounters with her, my favorite being the one where she randomly accosted me on the street an accused me of on throwing loaves of bread out the window...) called the police telling them I had put the garbage out on the street when I wasn't supposed to. I had to open up the bags and show them my stuff as well as take them to the empty apartment to prove that I was actually moving. The police were sympathetic and said they wouldn't even go talk to the woman after they saw what was going on, also admitting that some people just "hate foreigners". That was the first time I had a Dutch person admit to some sort of discrimination in "tolerant" Holland, so it was actually quite refreshing.

We finally got my stuff to Zoutsteeg and it was nap time amongst all my clutter; we started early and still had a rave to go to later that day. Unfortunately we got to the party at the same time as the cops who were there to shut it down. Too much police for one day, and worst moving day ever.

Pukkelpop 2008

2009-11-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

During the very first conversation I had with Lauren we argued over who would get the hot Scandinavian pilot. This is very funny, because he was probably gay, rarely in town, and most likely uninterested in either of us. We never saw him again, and we never agreed on a guy after that. Despite the alpha-female competition over his hotness, we decided to go to Pukkelpop, a festival in Belgium, that very same night. Even though we only knew each other for a few hours when we made this decision, it turned out to be a good one, because we became great friends very fast.

Pukkelpop was my 4th festival (Rockwerchter 2008 was my 3rd but my camera was stolen so it remains undocumented). Considering virtually the same bands play the festival circuit each summer with the same set, with band like Editors migrating to the main stage only to have White Lies also referred to as the "new Editors" take the side stage filling the void left by their predecessors because Editors are SO 2006... I digress. I won't talk so much about the music in this one but about the overall festival experience.

Pukkelpop was my second favorite festival overall. A strong line-up, good set-up, variety of entertainment and the right amount of festival randomness made it awesome. The major downer was the fact that we had to stand in line with camping gear and all to get our festival site wristband which we then used for the campgrounds. Using the "I'm foreign and I can't read the signs" approach we plowed through the line to the front to see what was going on. People HATED us but jokes on them; we were on the campgrounds in half an hour. Let the festival begin.

Below you can see an example of the earlier mentioned festival randomness. A year later we saw these same sculptures at Glastonbury...

They even had a marching band which I was so (unconsciously) enthralled by I that I started marching behind them and almost followed them to the back stage area. Luckily Lauren noticed that I was wandering off and snapped me back to reality and designated festival grounds. Me and Lauren in one of the first festival pictures; we're still decent here.
Standing back a third down the field and slightly to the side is the best place to watch a festival concert from. You can see the stage and screens, even if a giant stands in front of you. You have good sound and plenty of space to dance. It was here that I got accosted by a man with a banana... Twice. The second time I grabbed his banana. Lauren opened her eyes from her nap only when I had him by the banana and he was screaming in my face. Jokes on him.

Just a side note; if you do want to get to the front at a festival the key is to duck and weave - that way you'll stay below the mobs radar (at least if they're Dutch). If you see a gap in front of you, fill it. If you don't, someone else will. Also, dance with your elbows out. People get tired of being jabbed and move out of the way. No one will criticize you for this because deep down everyone knows that festivals are meant for dancing (even if they're afraid to participate).

At every festival you get the guys with the beer-cup-rainbow.

And that old chick...

You would think that a festival is the place to do some rare bird-watching, because at any point in time the sky is full of soaring objects. In reality they're just flying cardboard beer trays. See how many you can count in this picture - I count 4.

Pukkelpop had cool stage set-ups; this is Sigur Ros. At the end of the night they even had acrobats flying out of the trees. Not Sigur Ros - the festival.

On the last night I found God. Oh wait, it was just the lasers. Nevermind.

With Work to Berlin - August 2008

2009-10-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

I got to spend close to a week in Berlin when I was sent there for a major trading card game event that I helped organize. Still, I managed to find some time to sneak away and do some sightseeing. Our hotel was very close to Checkpoint Charlie, so on day one I went to the museum. The streets outside the museum re-create the scene from the East/West checkpoint (minus the wall of course).

The museum had exhibitions of all the crazy methods people used to escape the Eastern Bloc. One family even built their own hot-air balloon; they weren't specialists in the field of aerodynamics either, just a group of amateurs.
Random Berlin art.
And the purpose of my visit...

Our hotel was in Postdamer Platz, an ultra modern square that looked really cool at night.
Also close to the Brandenburg Gate...

One night I went out with a colleague to explore some of the city's nightlife. We took the metro which actually dropped us off above ground, above a busy intersection. As we walked down the steps we saw that there was a newspaper stand called Akuna Matata with a DJ spinning from it. It was cool but we wandered off to find food and a club. The first club we went to was odd... It was full of 30 somethings so it was older than we expected, and everyone was having an awesome time dancing to really lame music. On top of it, there was a huge mural with David Hasselhof's head... I later found out from a local German that such clubs are typical in Berlin. After about an hour we decided to head back, but when we got to Akuna Matata we saw a full party had started. It was awesome because we were outside, the drinks from the paper stand were cheap, and we were surrounded by cars and had trains going over our heads. We partied on.

I also had a couple of free hours the morning we were leaving Berlin, so I took the metro to see a few more sights, most importantly the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall.

The Fernsehturm Berlin, Berlin's famous TV tower visible from most parts of the city... This kind of reminded me of Toronto.

Unfortunately I had very little time so I just ran around the city the last day, but still managed to see some nice sites. Berlin is a city that really juxtaposes the old with the new, and from what I saw there is a lot to explore.

Since I'm writing this blog a year after this trip, I can tell you about a small-world syndrome. I met a colleague from the US who will turn out to be a long time gaming friend of my future boyfriend. Nerd Herd!

From Italy to Barcelona - July 2008 cont.

2009-10-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

The very same week we came back from Italy we flew off to Barcelona. Dani showed us around the city and we stayed in the suburbs with his parents.

No visit to Barcelona is complete without Gaudi, so we saw a few of his houses. This is the Casa Batllo (1905-07).

The attic of the house looked like the inside of a whale, but the architectural features made air ventilation excellent and provided a great facility for laundry drying to the residents.

This was the main lobby stairwell/elevator...

Barcelona is full of funky buildings, not all Gaudi related.

Casa Mila... Didn't go in because the line was too long and it was too hot, but Batllo is more impressive our local Spaniard informed us.

The Sagrada Familia was started in 1882 and not scheduled to be completed until 2026. Gaudi wasn't the original architect of the building but took over only after a year when the first architect resigned. He then proceeded to redesign it completely.

After the Sagrada Familia we wandered the streets of Barcelona and had a drink in this square.

After dark Spiderman and Batman emerged from hiding.

Barcelona after dark is a very lively city, and we had drinks in local bars and even went dancing. The mood in the city changes after dark, and the worn out buildings look beautiful.

The next day we were off to a late start, and took a local bus to Gaudi's Park Guell. On the way we passed a lot of graffiti.

The Park Guell is a garden complex designed by Gaudi between 1900 and 1914. It's now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Along this square is the world's longest bench, and you can run around below it amongst the columns.

This wave is also supporting it.

At the very busy main entrance to the Park.

Port in Barcelona.

After a couple of busy days in Barcelona we went to Dani's seaside house. On the way to the beach we passed through this very picturesque fishing village. Now the huts are transformed into summer houses, but it's easy to imagine what it would have looked like when it served its original purpose.

In the background you can see the beautiful beach we spent our days on. It was surrounded by forest and only one food vendor was around. It was great to be on a relatively wild beach away from industry and tourism. There were even architectural sites around (like this one), so the area has a lot of history.

We left Spain early on July 30, my 25th birthday. When we got back to Amsterdam I went straight to work, with luggage and all. It was more than rough.

Trip to Italy with our Resident Italian - June 2008

2009-05-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

Our Italian friend Diego invited us to spend a few days at his family's sea-side vacation apartment in a small Italian town called Cogoleto. In terms of tourism Cogoleto doesn't see much international action, so it was a very local experience. The streets were quiet and narrow with laundry drying all around. We spent some time on the beach and ate wonderful Italian food, so overall it was a great trip away.We're a very international group, and quite possibly the only non-Italians in Cogoleto.
Yes, that's Diego. This whole trip put him in context.
Frozen foods section at the supermarket...
Cogoleto was very pretty as it was a seaside town surrounded by mountains. On a cloudy day we skipped the beach and went to the next town up to do some mountain hiking.

Giulia, my former roommate from Amsterdam, lives in Milan. She came to Cogoleto to hang out at the beach and meet my friends. While at the beach we had two Italians hit on us (in Italian). They thought we were sisters but Giulia explained that I was from Canada and she was from Milano but that we knew each other from Amsterdam. The guy actually exclaimed "That's impossible!"... He doesn't leave Cogoleto very often.

In the afternoon we split from my expats and drove off to Milano, where I stayed in Giulia's beautiful apartment overseeing one of Milan's busy streets. We even had sushi.

Beautiful shopping centre near the famous Milan cathedral...
and the Duomo itself; one of the most ornate cathedrals I've ever seen.
The Duomo is famous for its hundreds of saints, including this morbid one...
After the cathedral we headed out to explore and have lunch.

And headed back to Duomo to climb the tower. From there, it was a flurry of activity and we headed off to the airport. The following weekend, Spain!

The Last Blast - June 2008

2009-05-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

After my mom's visit, things got really crazy. I finally found a job, and accepted, in the midst of visitors and travel plans. Jacqui and Jesse came to visit me, with Jesse flying in on the day my Swedish friend Stefan and I flew out to Stockholm to catch a Kylie Minogue concert. We only had a couple hours to hang out at the airport, before we had to fly off. In true bad-ass style, we had a smoke outside the airport. Where else can you do this?

Once we arrived in Stockholm; in front of the famous city hall...

Stockholm is a very pretty, clean, colorful city. I had a great time walking the streets, but from what I heard sometimes it's a bit too clean. The Swedes take great pride in the order they have created for themselves, and if you step outside the bounds, you are offending everyone's sensibilities. Still, it was a beautiful city.

The Royal Palace... We caught the changing of the guard.

We had dinner in this restaurant; food in Sweden is great.

More pretty streets and narrow streets...

Stockholm is situated across a few islands, so there are many boats, lots of water, and bridges.

I went to the Vasa museum to see this beautiful wreck that sank in Stockholm's harbor on it's maiden voyage in the 1600s. Originally, the sculptures all over the ship were painted in bright colors, so it was very spectacular. However, it's not a surprise this ship sank; it's design was very flawed. The proportion of the ship above water to that below water was too high, and the ballast weights were round, so they rolled around. The ship sailed out during a storm, and with the first tip, it failed to regain it's balance; water got through the windows, and it sank.

A random courtyard off the main shopping street...

And the main reason for our trip, the Kylie Minogue concert on her X tour. We could have gone and seen her in Rotterdam, but the good seats were sold out, so we thought we'd go to Stockholm instead. She's an amazing singer live, and her sets and costumes were over the top. She went through about 8 costume changes during the show. The flaoting skull that she entered on was my favorite.

I also decided to make a day trip to Drottningholm palace, the royal family's residence that is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. The best way to get to the palace was by steamboat. The scenery to the castle was very similar to those on Canada's island cruises.

The actual palace...

And the guards booth, with no material guard present.

The Chinese pavilion was a summer residance for the queen.

The guards tent outside was actually made of wood, but it was designed to look like a Turkish guards tent.

Back in Amsterdam, the excitement rolled on. We hung out at the coolest coffeeshop, Hillstreet Blues, on multiple occassions.

The girls of Pad22 had their reunion here.

All the travel and excitement of my visitors happened right before my first day at my first permanent, full-time job. I even had a minor freakout at a coffeeshop, but I survived, and had my last blast...

Mom's visit #2 - May 2008

2009-03-29T04:49:00.000-07:00

In the midst of my job hunt drama, my mom decided to come and visit me for the second time. This was great because we were able to unwind a bit, and visit some cool places in and outside of Amsterdam. Obviously, we had to go to Keukenhof gardens.

The tulip season was just ending, but they had many other plants, so the gardens were colorful all season.

The greenhouses were also spectacular.

We also went to Enkhuizen, an outdoor museum where buildings from different parts of the country and different points in time are collected. At the entrance they had some silos.

They also had houses from various periods open for visiting. We walked into one where a lady in traditional clothing was preparing dinner, wholesome home style.

The Dutch and their windmills...

The town also had entire streets brought over from other parts of the country to be part of the exhibit.

And this is Enkhuizen the town, outside of the museum grounds. Looks the same actually.

This is a view of Amsterdam from the roof of Club 11, a club on the 11th floor. Since I'm about a year late in writing this blog, this building is now being torn down.

My mom is very cool, and celebrated her 50th birthday in style: sailing the canals of Amsterdam on a party boat full of 20-something year-olds. Next step: mom moves to Amsterdam. I'm still working on that one.

April 20, 2008 - 4.20

2009-03-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

4.20 is a major holiday in Amsterdam. Enthusiasts from all over the world descend into a haze of smoke thicker than the usual smog. Even high profile celebrities like Snoop Dogg hang out at my local coffeeshop and shoot their music videos there. Elysia and I held a low key celebration by a canal.

These guys celebrated on a couch outside the city's historic stock market exchange. There's something for everyone.

Queens Day 2008

2008-08-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Queen's Day is on April 30th, but the main party night is Queen's Night on April 29th. That way people can party hard, then wake up the next day and party some more. We spent Queen's Night on a big, all-you-can-drink alcohol filled boat. Since I'm a year behind in writing these, four days ago we celebrated Queen's Night 2009 in exactly the same manner.

On Queen's Day I walked from my place in the Westerpark to the city center, checking out the crazy money making schemes people set up all over the city. This was some sort of shower stall converted into mini tornado with floating balls, and you had to catch the right one. Weird entertainment.

In the city center we ended up on a friends roof.

Towards the end of the day, it was clear that a few individuals had partied a bit too hard. Random dude here did just that.

Outdoor parting in Weteringschans round-about.

My friend Shane, with peanuts for nipples...

Another money making scheme was some sort of egg toss thing, but I didn't see the main event, only the aftermath. One of the highlights of the day was stepping on the uncracked eggs; I had a blast literally walking on egg shells.

April 2008 - Skiing in France pt. 2

2008-08-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

When I got back from Poland I started job-hunting for a cool grown-up job. Unfortunately, it wasn't happening because all the job interviews I had were for boring positions in the IT world, and at interviews I just wasn't able to bullshit enough based on my radio past. I had one interview for a position at an entertainment company that I really wanted, but didn't get it (don't feel bad for me just yet), and feeling rejected and poor, I decided to go on the university ski trip to France for a second year in a row. No longer a student, but merely unemployed, I still proceeded to rock it.

The village was called Les Deux Alpes, and these were my roommates. Even though they're dudes, they were still able to keep up with me.

One day I was talking to Jesse, my ultimate party buddy, and he mentioned that we should go raving in the Alps. "Alpe? I don't think that's very realistic man, I doubt we'll be able to pull that off... Wait a minute, what the fuck am I talking about? I already raved in the Alps!" Here's photographic evidence. It started out as a mere toga party...

And the view from our hotel window. We were on the ground floor so we could walk right out onto the slopes. Unfortunately, the police could walk right up to our room as well and harass us for all the garbage on the mountain. But overall, the trip was awesome.

Back in Amsterdam, back at work. Hate telemarketers? I was one for 3 months while I looked for work, harassing unsuspecting victims in England, Ireland and Poland.

The void: November 2007 - March 2008

2008-06-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

So what is there to say? I moved to Amsterdam, went through hell trying to find an apartment, worked as a tour guide, and partied.

As soon as I got back from Canada I worked as a tour guide of the historic city centre by day, and of the Red Light District by night. While preaching 17th Century Golden Age Amsterdam, pot and prostitutes to wide-eyed tourists, I realized how incredibly sucked in I've become by Bizzaro-World, becoming part of the scenery myself. One day, while walking through the Red Light District, I failed to notice a Santa walking around followed by kids in blackface, until my tourists started to point and shriek in delight thus drawing my attneiton to it. It's funny to think that walking through the Red Light District was just a regular part of my daily life. I even recognized many of the prostitutes and was on a nodding basis with them, and noticed when they switched windows. While doing this job I was also searching for an apartment, but if you've been reading the blog you know by now that it ended happily, and I finally found a place - 3 months later.

In between all of that I managed to hit some crazy raves, including some Dutch hardcore parties. The Dutch don't dance, but play them sound hardcore (loud, industrial pounding) and they go mental. It's so funny to see the world's tallest people, who live in the world's second most densely populated city, jump up and down kicking their legs, as is traditionally done to hardcore.

The morning after a party, and we usually partied until 8am, instead of going to bed we would hang out at Hill Street Blues, the coolest coffeeshop in town. My friend and I set a record of 10 hours of hanging out and outstaying people who came in hours after us. The coffeeshop was drafty, the couches were old, but the graffiti was awesome and the waitress was cool. No reason to leave. My "hard core" t-shirt is getting a lot of wear here; too bad the Dutch don't get it.

More on Dutch culture; they have a museum night once a year, where museums are open all night long alongside antics like this one. At the Rijksmuseum (national museum), they had a Dutch version of Joan River's harassing people in line with inane questions and hysterical laughter. Cameras were on hand to capture the action and show it on a massive screen over the entrance to the museum to entertain, or antagonize, the people in line. Nice to see the Dutch have a taste for fine art. I dreaded her, but secretly hoped she came over so I could be on the big screen, all foreign and confused.

We went to more raves and hung out in more coffeeshops...

But things were nice and wholesome too. I celebrated American Thanksgiving with Elysia and Paul for the second year in a row, this time at an American art centre.

More raves; this one was on a ship called the Stubnitz, a former freeze and transport vessel turned party venue. It travels the world but is anchored in Amsterdam. You can barely see it in the background.

I went to Antwerp one evening for, yes, a rave.
I bought this nifty hat at the Christmas market. It's badass, just like me.

Even Amsterdam's Smartshops embraced the Christmas spirit. They sell mushrooms and herbal alternatives to hard drugs.
This coffeeshop has huge versions of the Christmas ornaments I have at home

Dirty Dicks is a gay S&M club; even they have Christmas spunk

And the royal palace, on the only frosty day this winter. My next apartment is only 20 seconds walking distance from it, so you can say it's in my 'hood.
Anna the tour guide

At Christmas time I was still staying with Elysia; we bonded so much that we got each other the same Christmas gift. My goal in life is to do every cool party in this book. The other blond is Nyree, which makes me brunette Barbie by default.

Stefan the Swede
There's no nature in Amsterdam, so this is as close as you get to "getting away from it all": skating in the city's clubbing destination, Rembrandtplein. If Rembrandt saw the square that's named after him, he would resort to heavy drinking, probably in Rembrandtplein.

And for Christmas Eve, we went to a rave. This is the aftermath that rolled into Christmas Day.

On the second day of Christmas...

I also paid a visit to the city's botanical gardens, which were established in the 17th century when the Dutch East India company sailed the world and brought back a bunch of exotic plants.

New Year's Eve, a rave. The fairy returns.

The wings never made it out of this party; it was that intense. It was held in a squat outside of the city centre called the Ruigoord. It's an entire community; people live there permanently. One part of the party was in this barn, the other in a converted church.

After all the craziness, I went to Poland at the beginning of January for a month to regenerate and prepare myself for the job hunt to come. After all, one cannot stay a filthy raver and tour guide forever, although the two go hand in hand beautifully. Before doing this I moved into my new flat so all was ready for grown-up Anna when she returned. This picture was taken in an old building in my hometown of Lodz...

With Ewa, a former roommate from Amsterdam now living in Warsaw, in a cool traditional restaurant. Big straw roosters are typical in Poland. I don't know why.

This is the historic city-centre in Warsaw, but it's not that old. It was completely destroyed during, and rebuilt, after WWII

Back in Amsterdam, I sorted out my apartment. My room was quite cool, with a nice view that included a windmill. My previous place was by the city's eastern windmill, this one was by the western.

The stairs on the left lead directly from the 4th floor into my kitchen; I have no front door in this place. In Amsterdam, housing is never perfect.

This is my living room, and me dressed as a fairy for a costume party. Funnily enough, no one else showed up in costume. Thank god I'm cute, otherwise I would've felt like an ass.

At the moment I'm actually packing up this apartment and getting ready to move this coming weekend. It's an awesome place, so quintessentially Amsterdam: attic, no front door, shady landlord. But as much as I like it here I'm ready to move into my beautiful city centre apartment, and embrace my new life as a yuppie, and my new neighbor the queen. But fear not, more party pics to come! Anna is still cool.

Halloween #2 in Amsterdam

2008-02-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

When I got back to Amsterdam from my Canadian adventure I was living in Elysia's attic while I searched for a room to rent. I thought it would take a few weeks at most, it ended up taking over 3 months. People told me it's difficult to find something in Amsterdam, but nothing prepared me for the hell that is looking for a place. Because there are hundreds of applicants for each room, landlords can make all sorts of ridiculous demands, including, but not limited to:
1. no cooking
2. no boys
3. no meat in the house (refer to #2)
4. no living there on weekends
etc.

But living with Elysia was a blast, we even co-hosted a Halloween party. Elysia was Jessica Rabbit, and I was the devil, or a hooker with Halloween spirit; depends who was asking.

Our friend Dani is actually an attractive guy; good costume dude.

And our Scottish friend Allan showed up as, what else, a drunken Scot.

The Unthinkable Has Happened...

2008-02-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

I found a place. I now have a home in Amsterdam. Which means I can sit around on my computer, posting pictures, which I'll do soon.

Anna and Elysia do Lowlands: Aug 17-19

2007-08-20T11:19:00.001-07:00

This weekend Elysia and I made the hour long trek out of Amsterdam to Lowlands, the Netherland's biggest music festival. It was a huge festival, much bigger than Werchter, with many stages not only music, but film and other live performances as well. But musically, it wasn't as good. Because of all the stages, there were many schedule conflicts between awesome bands, and at other times filler like movies and cartoons took over. There were also a lot of shops, which was cool since I could get a whole new wardrobe. At the same time, it was souless; corporate sponsors ran everything, and many people spent hours in line waiting to get free crap they would never wear, rather than go and enjoy the bands. Many times I was the only person dancing! Strange, since dancing at a rock concert is the highlight of any festival isn't it? Another annoying thing was all the tents; no stage was outdoors. I guess they're scared of the rain, but rain is awesome when you're rocking out. Plus, if you weren't at the tent early on you didn't get in, and outside the tent you couldn't see the stage, there were no screens, and the sound wasn't great. I had an awesome time, but Lowlands is something you go to for the festival experience, not the music!

As always, saw a bunch of bands:

Editors - sound great live

Kasabian

The Good, The Bad & The Queen

Basement Jaxx - played on the side stage and it was packed

The Killers - much better than at Werchter. But Werchter was bigger musically; Killers played an evening show there, while at Lowlands they were that night's headliners so I guess they felt more confident

Brand New

The Rifles

Gabriel Rios

The View

CSS - awesome to dance to

Interpol - much better than at Werchter, after this show I'd see them again

Alpha Blondy

The Shins

Kings of Leon

Nine Inch Nails

Goose - the best band to dance to live, EVER

Enter Shikari - again, best stage presence. I had to buy their tshirt for it

Arcade Fire

Tool - the band has no cameras on them, ever. The screens are filled with highly disturbing images, most of which are from the videos. Plus the singer is weird, and from far away all I could see was the strange shape of his head (I don't know what he was wearing). The funny thing is when he speaks he seems so nice and normal, almost wimpy. They're music is hypnotic. I want to hang out with the singer from Tool one day, could be interesting.

Simian Mobile Disco (DJ set) - the cool thing about the festival was that it also had tents with DJs so you could dance all night long, which we did.

The festival had lots of random, cool instillations, like this one, everywhere. Why do I look so wrecked on day 1?

The main tent; I hated the tents.

The gates of rock. We couldn't figure out what the number meant; my guess was number of visitors.

In the morning one of the acts was this dude in the massive bird cage, whistling.

Our favorite food tent

And one of the random screens showing Pingu!

It seemed like the carrot was everyone's favorite meeting point.

The iconic Lowlands pic

Gay Pride - August 4

2007-08-20T10:31:00.001-07:00

During pride weekend there were street parties and events all over the city, along with the worlds largest floating gay parade. The parade was a bit boring but it was awesome to see so many people out on the streets just having fun.

One of the street parties the night before the parade; check out this guy's awesome shirt.

Amsterdam city hall, surrounded by people day of the parade

People were all over this bridge going over the Amstel river, which is where the parade ends.

The parade ran down one of the city's main canals, Prinsengracht

Guy diving off a float

The river Amstel, where the parade ends.

24th Birthday in Amsterdam

2007-08-01T15:06:00.001-07:00

My Birthday festivities started Saturday evening when Jesse and I and co. headed off to a rave in the Hague. I dressed as a fairy, and we partied until the morning.

When we got back to Amsterdam, we went to a friends house, and partied more. Although, I must admit, at this point I was a bit tired and was more the "fallen fairy" then the star of the party that I was earlier.
Since my birthday was on a Monday, and I wanted to do something uber-Amsterdam, I decided to go on a boat trip through the canals in the evening with a few of my friends. We had cake, wine, and of course, green.

Paul, Elysia, Daan, Jesse, old lady

I really wanted to see Amsterdam at night from the canals; it was beautiful, but unfortunately you can't see all the lights in the pictures.

Overall it was an amazing birthday, one I will never forget. Definitely an "only in Amsterdam" adventure.

Anna and Jacqui do Rock Werchter: June 28 - July 1

2007-07-09T10:32:00.001-07:00

After returning from Africa and being in a whirlwind of activity, Jacqui and I still managed to party, hard. The weekend before Werchter we went to partries and stayed up all night. Monday we went dancing and stayed up half the night. Tuesday we had friends over and stayed up all night. Oh yeah, there was some swimming in a canal and a group shower as well. Wednesday I handed in my MA thesis, thus finishing school forever, and Thursday morning we caught a bus to Belgium to rock out at Werchter. Our good friend said it best: "You go fucked up to these things"; and so we did. But we still managed to rock it. In fact, we invented a new word. We crock. Cracked out, we still manage to rock. So read on to find out how Anna and Jacqui Crocked Werchter.

The festival was organized incredibly well. We took a bus to Brussels, and from there our festival ticket got us train travel to Leuven, where a shuttle bus waited to take us to the camp and festival grounds.

At the gates of rock.

This picture was taken as soon as we walked in through the gates before we even saw the first band. Bags under our eyes and all, we're still hot.

We caught one song from My Chemical Romance before heading to the side stage to see Air, who were awesome.

I would have never guessed I would go see Marilyn Manson live, especially with Jacqui. Entertaining as always. His mic is a knife which was pretty cool. We even saw his naked ass.

Bjork wrapped up the first day, and is one of my overall festival favorites. Amazing visuals, really cool sound making machines, and lots of weirdness that is Bjork. Her chanting "Declare independence, don't let them do that to you" was my personal highlight.

We had to walk down this road lined with bars and shops from our campsite to the festival. It rained a bit, but no complaints.
As we arrived at Rock Werchter I said to Jacqui "This will be good for our health" and I meant it. On day two we slept in and Enter Shikari was the first act we caught (only the second of the day). They are my festival pic for best stage performance. They brought so much energy to the show, despite being one of the first to play in the day and the lameness of the crowd.

The schedule

Kaiser Chiefs doing a mediocre job, being watched by the worlds most waterproof Pearl Jam fan.

Bloc Party, awesome as usual. It was my time to rock. Even the rain didn't matter.

All the Bloc fans behind us.

After Bloc Party, Queens of the Stone Age took the stage. People didn't dance much, so at one piont Josh Homme started to chant "Everbody knows you dance how you fuck, you dance how you fuck, you dance how you fuck... So how do you fuck Belgium?" The crowd was probably more stunned than anything when they realized what he was saying. Jac and I are good dancers.

The festival had this awesome recycling campaign; if you turned in 20 empty cups you got a free drink. It helped keep the place a bit cleaner (haha), encouraged recycling, and got people free drinks. Awesome.

Our home, and me wearing the t-shirt that I would lose in the future, but no fear...

Luxury accomodation

Day three was off to a good start with an awesome show by the Bravery on the side stage.

Still wearing my shirt...

Crowd Surfen Verboden

Some Belgians started a free hug campaign

Life immitating art

The Killers were alright, but if you have the album their live show doesn't do much to enchance the experience.

The world's biggest Killers fan

and Peter Gabriel?

We made it to the end of day three, now waiting for the Chemical Brothers to take the stage. They were awesome; great music, great stage show, and the crowd went nuts. Which is why I have no pics, too busy dancing and sitting on strangers shoulders to get a better view of the ongoings. Even better, ever seen random articles of clothing scattered around at concerts, and laughed at those peopole who lost them? I became one of them. I lost my Bloc Party shirt during Chemical Brothers, and only realized I did about half an hour after the fact, after we moved from our original location. I went back and couldn't find it, but Jac's good at finding things, so I sent her, and she did. She's a star.

Breakfast of champions

The side stage was the Pyramid, but the tent was kind of lame because if you were outside it you couldn't see the stage.

Interpol. The biggest disappointment for me. I was so looking forward to them and their show was lame. I still love their album though.

On the last day we discovered this whole area of the festival. I bought the rainbow dress :)

Faithless closed the four day shindig, and after their encore people were still ready to party. Some sat around setting garbage on fire (some even tried to light a fireproof tarp...) while men in black with fire extinguishers snuck up on them and killed the fun. The kicker was that the group of five people huddled over a pile of garbage trying to light it would disperse, and try to set five individual fires. Then a bunch of people stole a huge garbage can and started drumming, while a massive group (including us) gathered around to dance to it. When security came to take the bin back, a mob chased them down, trying to get it back. On the walk back to the camp ground, we heard loud splat/thud noises, realizing that people from all around were throwing bananas. So, it really looked like it was raining bananas. We were scared we'd get hit, and as we were trying to run away, I, Anna, slipped on a banana. When we got to our tent, a group of people started a massive fire feet away, but we were too tired to care and passed out.

The aftermath

Musically, keep your eyes and ears open for these artists when they come to town. They have great music, and are awesome live: Bjork, Air, Enter Shikari, Bloc Party, Queens of the Stone Age, Chemical Brothers, Faithless, Klaxons, Goose, The Bravery

And a list of who we saw, chronologically:

Day 1: My Chemical Romance, Air, Marilyn Manson, Beastie Boys, Bjork, Muse

Day 2: Enter Shikari, Kings of Leon, Joan as Police Woman, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys

Day 3: Heideroosjes, The Bravery, Razorlight, Amy Winehouse, Snow Patrol, Klaxons, Goose, The Killers, Peter Gabriel, Keane, The Chemical Brothers

Day 4: !!!, Cold War Kids, The Kooks, Interpol, Incubus, Metallica, Faithless

And now, I'm ready for more. Lowlands in August, yey!

Sam and Anna Do Amsterdam

2007-06-26T12:39:00.001-07:00

I just had my American cousin Sam visit me for a few days, and of course, we did Amsterdam.

But we also took a day trip to the city of Leiden, where the country's oldest university is located. Rembrandt was born and grew up in Leiden as well.

Very narrow alleys...

And a really cool windmill museum.

Back in Amsterdam, we went to the CoBrA Museum, formed by artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam (get it? first letters) after WWII to promote abstract art. They had a cool exhibition on advertising.

Now I'm frantically getting ready for Rock Werchter, I leave on Thursday! It's going to be an awesome festival, but right now it's raining and only 15 degrees (30 in Toronto; how can Canada be warmer?)!!

Anna Does Africa: Tunisia and Libya, May 24 - June 7

2007-06-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

After handing in a rough draft of my thesis, I took off for a month long adventure. I stayed with my grandparents in Poland for a week, then headed off to Warsaw for a reunion with some old Pad22 friends, and flew off to Africa for two weeks!

My first week in Tunisia was in a resort town, but I'm not a big fan of sitting in one place for too long, so I took a bus (public transport!) to Nabeul, a town with one of the countries most famous Friday souks (markets). Nabeul specializes in pottery.

On the way back from Nabeul I stopped at the Medina (old, fortified city) in Hammamet. Hammamet was the resort town I was staying in; it's famous for the beautiful beaches. But I was also quite a bit from the city centre, so if I wanted to visit the Medina I had to take a bus.

I also went on a safari that took us through the south of the country. This is the amphitheatre in El Jem, one of the best preserved and biggest in the world (seats 30 000!). Many films, including Gladiator, were shot here.

They also dressed me up and put me on a camel for a ride in the Sahara!

My camel...

The Chott el Jerid is a huge, salt lake, but most of the time it's dry. The salt looks like a huge ice sheet in the desert, it's really cool.

And of course, souvenir shops at every point of interest.

We also stopped at an oasis, where I got to climb a palm tree! I actually got high up, but the picture doesn't show it...

We then took a jeep through the desert. Behind me is Onk Jemal, which means "Camel's Head", because the rock formation resembles the head and hump of a camel. The Star Wars films were also shot in Tunisia, and sites are scattered all over the country. Onk Jemal was the background for the pod race in The Phantom Menace.

These sets were used in the Star Wars film for exterior shots of Luke's home. They've been left in the desert to decay, with no public transport or maps leading to them. It's amazing how you can just run around the sets of one of the most important films of time, and they're not protected at all!

A wedding celebration on the road!

We don't have street signs like this in Canada, or Holland.

At one point we were very close to the Algerian border; this oasis was about 8km away.

I returned to the Hammamet Medin a few times. This is a view over the old town from the top of the Kasbah (the old military fort).

I also went to a hammam, a public bath house complete with an amazing sauna. It was great.

Chillin' at a cafe...

The Medina...

Fishing boats...

One of the non-touristy streets outside the Medina.

Ben Ali is the president of Tunisia. He's been re-elected since the 80s with a victory of 99.9% or so. By law, his photograph must hang in all public places, including hotels and souvenir shops. Hmm...

I also spent a day wandering around the city of Sousse. All day long, my tormentors aka men, sat around cafes doing absolutely nothing!

A view of the mosque from the Ribat, a fortified military/school.
Sousse...

What happens when you fall asleep on the job? Your picture ends up on someone's blog.

Children leaving school

Walking along the Medina walls in Sousse

This was the beach by my hotel in Sousse, although I was there for only one night. The beach in Hammamet was even nicer.

The mosque in Kairouan. They made me wear this robe that covered my arms to my wrists and my legs to my ankles. The god damned hypocrisy of it all pissed me off so much! It didn't matter what I wore on the streets, long pants or a short skirt, the men tormented me regardless! But as soon as I entered a mosque, I had to be modest, covered from neck to toe. Damned hypocrites. That's what I liked about Libya; people took their god fearing to the streets, and behaved the same way towards women in the mosque and outside it ie. respectfully!

A barber. Men either sat around at cafes or getting their hair cut.

Kairouan is the centre of Tunisia's carpet production.

We stopped at another oasis, where I got to drink palm juice! This is a pomegranate tree.

And the juice booths...

We stopped in Matmata, a region famous for its lunar lanscape.

As you get closer to the Libyan border, you see more and more shops selling all sorts of junk. Because Tunisia is much poorer than Libya, and because prices in Libya are lower than in Tunisia (Libya is very wealthy because of the huge oil reserves), many Tunisians buy things in Libya and sell them in Tunisia.

Gasoline is also extremely cheap in Libya, so Tunisians fill up their tanks (you can't take gas over the border outside of your car's tank), and sell it in Tunisia for a profit. This isn't legal, but because of the poverty the police look the other way and let people earn a living.

Those booths are currency exchange places near the border. Shady.

We waited 6 hours at the Tunisian/Libyan border as they made our visas. This is the Tunisian side; you can see the car draining his gas to sell it.

Once in Libya, we went to Sabratha, the westernmost of the three cities of Tirpolis. Libya is full of ancient Roman sites that you can just wander around. Because Gathafi doesn't want to acknowledge other influences on Libyan history and culture other than Islam, he wants to dismiss evidence that Roman's were on Libyan soil. As a result, he takes no interest in preserving these ancient sites. Sabratha was excavated by Italian archaeologists (Libya is a former Italian colony) and handed over to UNESCO.

A road sign pointing in the direction of the brothel

These mosaics are original!

The capital of Libya is Tripoli. This is a small mosque in the city centre.

The "wedding street" in the Medina, where you can buy all the materials and accessories for your wedding dress.

Tripoli fish market. I thought of Amsterdam (the fish, not the city) while I was there. He's still alive and well if you're wondering. My Italian roommate Linda took care of him while I was away. I call her "The Godmother".

I was really surprised by Tripoli. It's a very modern city, full of big modern cars and grass. The country has a lot of money to spend on things like irrigation and roads. The city is also full of billboards with quotes from Gathafi's ridiculous manifesto "The Green Book".

If you're a bride to be, you'll get one of these huge baskets as your wedding gift. It's full of crap like hair dryers, make-up and other tools to help you get ready for your big day.

The Medina walls, and good ol' Gathafi.

The brass works street in the Medina

It was cool to visit Libya because it's not a tourist destination yet. If you want to visit, you have to go in a group of at least 4, with a police escort and local guide. But because of this, you get a more authentic cultural experience.

And more modernness...

Leptis Magna, a major city of the Roman empire and part of the Tripolis (along with Sabratha and modern day Tripoli).

A roadside fruit market in Libya. It was watermelon season!

There are a lot of immigrants in Libya, especially since its a very wealthy and safe country when compared to the rest of the disaster that is Africa. Many of them are unemployed, and sit by the side of the road with the tools of their trade in hand (paint brush=painter, hammer= construction) awaiting employment. If you need their services, you can hire them on the spot.

Back at the border Gathafi is present to see you off. You can see all the stuff people are bringing to sell back in Tunisia.

On the Tunisian side, I had fun watching these dudes cram all the carpets they bought into their car.
You can hire these worker ants to carry all your purchases from the Libyan to the Tunisian side of the border.

Back in Tunisia we stopped by the ksour, fortified granaries belonging to tribes where they could store and if need be, defend their grain.

The exterior walls of the ksour

We returend for another night in Matmata, where people used to live in these pit dwellings. The soft rock was easy to dig into, but it was also strong enough to retain its shape. The dwellings were ideal, because they protected from the extreme temperatures of the desert. One hotel in Matmata was used for the interior shots of Luke's home in Star Wars (the set in the desert was used for the exteriors).

I was the biggest (and probably the only) Star Wars fan on the trip. I stalked that hotel out myself. The next day we visited a proper Matmata dwelling.

The kitchen, surprisingly modern.

On the "roof"; they even have satellite tv!

The last town on the trip was Mahdia...

The cemeteries in Tunisia are intersting; they aren't separated from the city at all, but are scattered whereever there is free space.

That's it! My trip to Africa was amazing, but I'm glad to be back home in Amsterdam. After more traveling, I still maintain that it's the best city in the world!

Remembrance and Liberation Day

2007-05-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

Friday May 4th was Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. There was a ceremony in Dam Square in front of the war memorial, which the Queen attended. It was marked with two minutes of silence at 8pm.

The Queen went out of the Royal Palance and walked accross Dam to the memorial. You can see the set up on the monitor.

The next day, Saturday May 5th, was Liberation Day. It was celebrated all over the city. Museumplein had the most festivities, with many stages with live music and various information booths about national organizations and charities. It was a cool contrast, rock music and the Rijksmuseum.

Museumplein was full of people that day...

Outside the national theatre, the Carre, a huge stage was set up on the Amstel for an evening concert. The Queen also attended the concert, and later floated around the river in her royal boat, waving to cheering fans. She's a cool lady. I was able to get this picture of the stage during soundcheck, when I went for a bike ride ride during the day...
because in the evening it was too packed.

The Queen leaving the Carre to go watch the concert. She's the little lady in black with the red robe; can you spot her?

The canals were a popular place to watch the concert from, it was a bit like Queen's Day again. And all the homes were draped in Dutch flags!

Queen's Day, Koninginnedag - April 30

2007-05-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

On Queen's Night (April 29) Ewa and Giulia came back for Queen's Day, so it was a girls of Pad22 reunion!

The night before Queen's Day is Queen's Night, which is when the partying starts. People go to clubs that have special events in honor of the Queen (read: get drunk). The tradition started in the early 90s when pre-Koninginnedag riots were a problem in the Hague. How did the government deal with the rioters? Convince them that a party is a much better way to spend Queen's Night! It also became a national holiday.

Queen's Day is a celebration of the Queen's birthday. It started with Queen Wilhelmina, grandmother of the current Queen, on August 31. After 1948 Koninginnedag moved to April 30, Queen Juliana's Birthday. When her daughter, current Queen Beatrix, took the thrown she decided to keep the holiday on April 30th, because her birthday is on January 31, and it's too cold and rainy to party outside then.

The day is also known as the vrijmarkt (free market), the one day in the year when anyone can sell anything on the street. We saw everything from traditonal lemonade stands, to getting your picture taken with someones dog, to using people's toilets for a small fee.

Orange is the color for Queen's day, because the Royal family is the House of Orange. Even the Red Light District celebrated. The girls on the steps in the orange underwear are prostitutes.

Many people spend the day on a boat, it's really the place to be. This is the Amstel river, from which we boarded our boat. Behind me is the Muntplein (Mint Square).
We were lucky to be on a boat organized by the unviersity that day...

We partied and danced to crappy music, and even got stuck in a traffic jam under one of the bridges. Most people were getting drunk.
People were partying all over the streets and houseboats.

We bought our matching milkmaid hats in Keukenhof, and they were very popular during the day. We counted 7 people taking pictures of us. Towards the end of the day, a slightly larger group of people was taking what we thought was our picture. We thought we were a popular attraction, so we waved, posed and laughed. We didn't notice that beside us a guy was spewing off the side of our boat. I wish I could see the picture those people got. But because of these hats, everyone assumed we were Dutch. And because we were so cute, we were able to avoid the rush for paid toilets in crappy restaurants, and were let in to the fancy Krasnapolsky Hotel.

The boat made a few stops, so we got to spend some time on the crowded streets.

This was our Queen's Day schtick.

When we hit the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal) there were more boats...

... and more...

... so we decided to go boat hopping. Earlier in the day we convinced a guy from a boat full of old people to jump on our boat. About half an hour later, he appeared on our boat again, and we hopped along to his. To get to his boat (the guy in the orange) I had to go over this one. The guy thought it would be really funny to grab me as I jumped across and pull me down on top of him. Haha, his floor broke under our weight. I took a quick rest on his couch, and hopped on.

Happy Queen's Day!

Anna and Corina do Amsterdam!

2007-05-02T01:34:00.000-07:00

Once again, I had a Canadian visit me here on the other side of the ocean! And, as always, it was a blast! On our first day we were both tired, so we wandered around the city, and climbed up NEMO, a weird green building that looks like a ship, which houses an Ontario Science Center-like museum. From there, you can get a view of the city.

To fully incorporate Corina into Dutch society, we took a bike trip to Muiden, a town just outside of Amsterdam. Muiden is famous for the Muiderslot (Muiden Castle). The fortress was built in 1280 by Floris V, who was sympathetic to the poor, but also to the French; he was murdered in 1296. The castle is the first in Holland to have round towers, a French invention.

Muiden has a central lock that sends boats out into the IJsselmeer; many of the old VOC boats still sit here.

Back in Amsterdam we had lunch at Metz and Co, a restaurant on the 6th floor! This is pretty much as high up as you can get in Amsteram, which offered us another cool view of the city.

A guy I know has a small motor boat, and does private trips through the canals. We got 9 girls together and cruised through the canals for 3 hours, it was great. Here's Amsterdam's narrowest house next to Amsterdam's widest bridge. Can you spot it?

Marianna (Romania), me and Core in front of NEMO

The famous Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge)

We visited the Portugese Synagogue, built in the 17th Century and still active today. At that time, it was Europe's largest.

In the women's gallery; can you tell I'm not impressed?

We took another day trip out of Amsterdam, this time to the famous cheese market in Alkmaar. Alkmaar, in 1573, was the first Dutch town ot repel occupying Spanish troops. The locals opened the locks and flooded the area with sea water, forcing the invaders to retreat. The victory got the town weighing rights, which laid the foundations for the famous, traditional cheese market. The cheese market happenes every Friday morning during the spring and summer months in the square outside the Waag (weigh house).

Cheese is heavy.

Buyers look at the cheese, agree on a purchase, and then the men in colorful hats (each color represents a different guild) carry the cheese to the weigh house. It's funny to watch them run.

I even got weighed on the old scales. Cheesy tourist pic.

The rest of Alkmaar is a regular Dutch town, cute and small.

On our last day we went to the Bazaar, a cool Middle-Eastern restaurant located in an old church. Many churches in Amsterdam are no longer active.

In Search of Tulips - April 14

2007-04-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

In our search for adventure, Jacqui and I decided to take our bikes on the train to Haarlem, and from there on a bike ride through the Dutch country side to see some flowers. Over the course of the day we did about 35km. One of the bike paths we ended up on was extreme...

We found tulips, and were even able to go for a walk through some fields...

As we cycled on, we looked at the map and realized we were very close to the famous Keukenhof gardens, so we decided to check it out. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I've posted loads of photos, so you can get a small idea of what the place is like. When Jac and I saw this part we both looked at eachother and said "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!"

Keukenhof's Next Top Models

We spent the whole day cycling and looking at flowers and it was one of the best days ever. Later that night I went to my friend Elysia's cat's birthday party. We stayed up late and I had my bike to get home, but my friend Nyree didn't, and since the trams had stopped running, I decided to try (again) to cart someone (past experiments were disasterous, although I'm good on sitting on the back of other's bikes). Well, tonight was a special night. For the first time I carted someone on the back of my bike through the city. I am Dutch. And that's thanks to my amazing "cycling through tulip fields" talent.

Easter Sunday picnic in Amsterdam's Vondelpark

2007-04-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Vondelpark on our bikes; we kinda looked like a gang, but with crappy wheels.

me, Michela (Italy), Linda (Italy), Emily (Australia), Jac (Australia), Yael (Israel), Juan (Argentina). People not visible in this picture: Tom and Andrea (Germany), Elysia (USA), Paul (Nederland)