Leaving today!! So excited to finally be going home, but it is so bittersweet. I loved my time here more than this silly little blog can say. So much happened and I learned a lot. I’m so grateful that I had this experience while I was young. I will never forget my time here.
Sitting at the gate using up the last 8 minutes of free wifi while I wait for the line to board to get shorter. Getting here was a pain especially with two suitcases on the train! Ugh…the passport check lady got irritated when I couldn’t understand her French and asked incredulously if I really didn’t speak French. Well, security was fine (considering I never had my OFII forms checked by the immigration office…oops!). Can’t wait to get home!
It’s not good bye forever, Paris! See you again….later?
Bon voyage to me!
Had to be up & out of our room by 10 so then we just sat in the hostel bar for awhile. We got lunch at a little canal-side place and hung out drinking coffee after our meal. Thennnn back to the hostel to pick up our bags and off to the train!
We couldn’t figure out wheeeere the hell in the station we were supposed to catch our train so we just wandered around till a screen FINALLY told us what platform to go to. We had a fast euro train! It was some fancy high speed shit from Amsterdam to Brussels to Paris. I mostly just read the whole time haha with my new free Kindle for PC! Wooo
BACK TO PARIS! Hooray! Nick met me at the station and then we went to get les sandwiches grecs at the best little doner stand ever! He’s so nice, he put extra sauce on the pita for me! Yummm I will miss kebabs and doner sandwiches when I leave Europe…the only thing lacking about American fast food is Middle Eastern halal fast food! Hurry up and catch on, USA! After that we came back to his apartment to drop off my suitcase and then we went and bought some cheap beers and sat under a bridge with a perfectly unobstructed view of the entire Eiffel Tower. Ya know it sparkles every hour on the hour? IT LITERALLY TWINKLES. This city is magical. So bittersweet to be leaving….but so excitedddd to go home!
Last day in Paris tomorrow…I don’t know how to feel!
Also, when my copy of Picture of Dorian Grey went missing, I figured I’d just misplaced it or it fell down somewhere, or I’m just stupid and left it some where. But when my other two books that I just bought and were still in their plastic shopping bag go missing from the same place, I’m inclined to believe there is a book thief in my dorm. Of all the shit to steal out of someone’s belongings, you choose a beat up copy of Picture of Dorian Grey and two Agatha Christie mystery novels?! I have the literary tastes of my Aunt Jean and I spent a combined total of 10 euros on those books, but still….that’s just stupid! Who steals those?! Now I have nothing to read on the train tomorrow or on all my many plane rides back to America! Hmph…
Final full day in the Hamster! Patrick went to mass, so I wandered around and went to get hot cocoa and enjoy life. I thoroughly enjoyed it! Then after church, Patrick and I walked to the “best doner in Europe” again because it was so cheap and delicious. Andddd we found the cutest park to sit in and stalk cute European dogs for awhile. I sat and read my new Agatha Christie book (because I’m actually an 83 year old spinster who never married and has 6 cats).
After laying in the park for awhile we walked back to the hostel so I could shower and then we went back to Skek for dinner…soo yummy! The waitress recognized us, too and she kept saying how glad she was that we came twice in one week haha cute! Of course we had a bunch of time to kill after dinner, so we sat with a pitcher of Heineken in one bar and then wandered around the Red Light District for awhile. We got out of the Red Light area after like 10 minutes and found ourselves in THE CUTEST university district..we creeped in windows with open curtains and OMG DUTCH HOUSES ARE SO CUTE. Cannabis and prostitutes aside, this city is really cool.
We walked back to our street and got hot cocoa (my second for the day….oops) and waffles! Nom. We leave to go back to Paris tomorrow…bittersweet! So happy to go home so soon! But it still seems so far away…ugh.
Woke up late today…oops. Anyway, we walked for like 20 minutes [the farthest we’ve gone in this city so far] and it was like….the edge of the city. This place is so tiny and weird…it feels like a space station haha well we got “the best doner kebab in Europe” and OMG yes it was. They bake all the bread fresh there in the restaurant and it was sooo cheap and yummy. Then we walked back and went to this cake bakery called de taart van m’n tante, and it was magnificent! They serve tea and cakes and coffee and it’s adorable and yummy.
After cake we had nothing else to do soooo….we sat and drank beer, what else? There was some soccer tournament championship thing on tonight between FC Barcelona and Manchester United, so it was fun to hang out and be all European and watch a “match du foot.” Barcelona won! Wooo!…..? Then more beer….obvi.
And then we were bored so we walked around the Red Light District and looked at prostitutes dry humping window panes to get customers. Straaange area. “LIVE SEX PORNO SHOW!!” “EROTIC COUPLES LIVE” “BANANASHOW!!” I’m a little confused as to what the last one is, but if it’s anything like what it sounds like, count me out.
At about 9 am I started getting tired so I went upstairs to take a nap till lunch. Then the hostel cleaning guys came in and started vacuuming and opened the windows and were annoyingly loooud! Anyway, then for lunch Patrick and I went to the Pancake Bakery, where I had an apple and cheese pancake…it was soooo good. They are big Dutch pancakes baked with basically any assortment of things you want inside. They have big jugs of stuff [“sloop”] hahah that look like molasses on every table to put on your pancakes. nomnomnom
After pancakes, we just walked around and went to the World Press Photo ‘11 exhibit at the Old Church. It was really moving and some of the photos were really hard to look at. The church was super old and wooden and creaky and cute too.
Patrick found the address of some amazing Indonesian restaurant and so we walked to the area by the Heineken brewery. It was too early to eat dinner so we sat and had a few beers at a random bar by the restaurant. I have no idea what I ordered, I just pointed to a picture on the wall…it was good! Spicy beef with vegetables and some rice noodle things….yumm!
Not a whole lot to do after dark unless you want to spend a lot of money of drinking or smoking, which neither of us want to do at this point…we’re so close to going home that we just want to get there already!!
4 days!
Side note: two people in my hostel dorm room have the worst snoring problems I have ever heard in my entire life. I was woken up at 5 am. I did not fall back asleep. I got out of bed at 6:30 to shower and get ready for the day. These people need to see a doctor!! It’s the worst snoring I’ve ever experienced anywhere!
Erghhhh crappy weather todayyyy. Grey and raining and windy and basically just miserable. We walked to find lunch somewhere, ended up getting kind of lost and then just ducking into a cafe/bagel shop when it started to rain really bad. It wasn’t actually bad, but it just wasn’t enough food for lunch! And weird side note: the entire menu board was in English…there was no Dutch anywhere in the cafe except when the baristas spoke…haha just a weird thing I noticed. Anyway I had a smoked salmon bagel and green tea and it was nooommmyy.
After bagels slash waiting for the rain to clear, we went to the English bookstore so I could have something to read on the plane ride hooooome on Wednesday!!! I got three Agatha Christie mystery novels haha I feel like a grandma, but oh well they were cheap!!
Then we proceeded to do NOTHING for a large part of the day because it was just so crappy out. We ended up napping since we literally just had nothing to do haha after napping, we went to a bar near our hostel for some beer before dinner. We got Chinese for dinner, and it was really good and I want more fried riiiice.
Then more sitting around, bumming around in the hostel bar and sitting online. Blahh I want this weather to get better so we can actually go out and do stuff and not spend my last few days in Europe inside bored!
Woke up early to the sounds of weird drilling construction across the canal from our hostel. Got ready and wandered out to find lunch on the way to the Rijksmuseum. We ended up going to a little canal-side bistro…service in Amsterdam takes forevvvver so we took like 2 hours for lunch haha…I had a grilled chicken club with truffle-eggsalad. Soooo nommy. We went to the museum after lunch and walked around for about an hour. It was a tiny museum but it still had plenty of cool masterpieces. After the museum we walked to the Heineken brewery! We took a self-guided tour of the Heineken factory and got to taste fresh, cold beer along the way. It was so fun! There was a simulated “ride” in 4D that you pretend you are being brewed in the beer! haha it was so cute. And of course free beer. Mmmm
After Heineken and some more walking around, Patrick found a place for dinner called Skek. It was a place run for students (who get discounts with ID!) by students. The cutest Dutch girl was our waitress, she had so much energy and spoke perfect English! I had a Japanese hamburger with this cabbage and onion salad. For dessert I had the cheese of the month with a fig compote. Nommmm.
No plans for tomorrow as of yet…probably just find something to eat in a park! Home in 7 days!
We left Berlin around 5 to fly to Amsterdam…crazy little European airports and weird terminals. Amsterdam was cold when we got here too! We got all settled into the hostel and dropped our stuff off before searching for dinner. We’re in a kind of seedy area with lots of sex shops and such. It’s hilarious cause the buildings are so old and cute. The canals are really pretty with lots of cute boats.
Didn’t do much since we were so tired from traveling but we wandered out to find dinner. We ended up at an Italian restaurant ahah I had a mushroom pizza and salad. Early night in hostel dorm…old men count: 2.
