Vacation Post Part V: Going Abroad

Barcelona was a nice way to ease myself out of Spain--English, ethnic diversity, fast food, things being more expensive... Hello Amsterdam!

The orange triangle is the tip of the airplane's wing

It was a little bit of a miracle that we caught the flight. Remember when I said the trains were confusing? And I talked to that french guy in Spanish? Well, they were still confusing when we left, and we ended up cruising along the Mediterranean coast for about 20 minutes before we could fix the problem. We hopped off at a little town called Sitges (pronounced sitches) and caught a fast taxi back to the airport. The countryside was beautiful, but we were much too stressed to enjoy it.

We said goodbye to Jenny and ran to our flight, making me wish that I had the discipline and appropriate attire to get a gym membership and actually go. We caught the flight, sweaty and relieved, then took another cab to the hostel.

I wish now I'd taken a photo of the hostel, because the stairs were impressively steep and probably difficult for all the stoned tourists to navigate. Actually, this hostel didn't smell like pot any more than the one in Barcelona did, and they had some pretty strict no-smoking zones. 

The next morning we caught a tram and went back to the train station where we had arrived from the airport the night before, because it had been so pretty at night and we wanted to see it in the daytime.

And this church

Look at the snow on the ground! The temperature hovered around 0 degrees (C) the whole time we were there, a big shock after Barcelona sunshine.

So, because we were tourists, we stopped at the tourist office and ended up buying tickets to the hop-on, hope-off canal tour boats, which turned out to be the best idea ever. Hop on a warm, cushioned boat with a pleasant British/Dutch voice telling you neat factoids about the things you're seeing, then hop off at an interesting museum or market or point of interest and hop on again once you get too cold.

View of canal boats from the canal boat. (ours was nicer)

Our first stop was the Anne Frank House, of which I did not take any photos. Maybe because my eyes were too teared up to see through the viewfinder, or maybe because photos were not allowed.

In all seriousness though, it was an interesting, worthwhile experience. In the states, WWII is mostly something long ago and far away, the thing of second semester world history class in high school. But in Europe (some places more than others), it's much more present and palpable. Time is on a different scale over here, and the cultural memory is longer. (Have I mentioned the flag of the republic that is flying from a house on the way to Fonsa?)

Anne Frank

After eating hotdogs from a cart, we got back on the boat, took more photos, and went to the Van Gogh museum, which had been relocated to the Hermitage museum while the real museum got renovated. Again, no photos allowed, but it would have detracted from the experience to have everyone going around snapping pics of all the works. I'm sure you can find pictures of all the paintings online anyway.

I was expecting Van Gogh's mental health to be a bigger part of the museum than it was, which now I think was actually very tactful and respectful toward the artist. The biography section didn't gloss over it, but it didn't draw particular attention to it either, instead focussing on the evolution of the artist and his art. 

The Hermitage was neat too. For about 300 years it was an almshouse for poor, elderly and homeless women, but is now a museum because the facilities weren't quite up to modern standards. Still, they were pretty good and the museum was designed to give you the warm fuzzies about how caring and kindly Dutch people are. (successful) 

Now a few more photos of the canals and canal houses, just to show how pretty and not-Spanish everything was.

The weird part of Amsterdam comes tomorrow, the part you don't see from your heated canal boat.