Amsterdam in Photos

September 21 - September 23

In reality, these pictures will more likely accompany Max's G-rated Amsterdam blog. Though Amsterdam is decidedly less strict than our country on matters of drugs and sex, it does have one unbreakable rule: no photos in the Red Light District. As such, I will continue our story with a more wholesome exploration of our experience in the city.

After our first night, which Max explains in his R-rated post, we started our first full day in Amsterdam with a canal tour.

Amsterdam's landscape is defined by its canals. As the city expanded, it dug canals in a semicircular pattern outward around the center of town. There are also a few canals that intersect perpendicularly to allow easier movement by boat through town. The canals are lined by both boats for transit, and sedentary house boats.

Here you can see consecutive bridges from the canal, the famous "seven bridges" view.

The tour also explained the reason for Amsterdam's characteristically tall, narrow houses - buildings were taxed based on width, and this design minimized the amount the owner was required to pay. Because the buildings were so tall, they were equipped with a pulley system at the gabled roof. The pulley was used to move furniture and belongings in and out of the house when a family moved. The front facade is also slightly slanted out into the street so that nothing slammed against the wall as it was being pulled.

West Church overlooking the canal at dusk.

In addition to the lovely canals and architecture, we discovered some fantastic food in Amsterdam. Here, Max is devouring a traditional Dutch pancake made with apples, cinnamon, and whipped cream. This one was very yummy, but the true treasure is the one sitting immediately before him as it is ingeniously stuffed with BACON! The crispy bacon and the fluffy pancake were wonderful with maple syrup. It was unexpectedly delicious and even better than the apple one!

Innovative and yummy food is not only found in fancy restaurants. FEBO is a fast food chain that has hot krokets dispensed in what is basically a large vending machine. You put in a euro and take out a breaded morsel filled with anything from creamy chicken and potato (kipkroket), to noodles with vegetables (bami), to melted cheese (kaassouffle). We have not seen FEBO dispensers with krokets anywhere else in Europe, but I hope they catch on soon.

We spent the morning of our second day visiting the Van Gogh Museum. Unfortunately, photography is prohibited there too, so I will substitute his masterpieces with this photo of Max playing with bronze iguanas in a park nearby (the city has some very interesting public art along with its museums). The museum's collection spans the entirety of his short career, starting with his drawings from 1880, continuing on to his first paintings from 1883, and ending only days before his suicide in 1890. In such a focused exhibit, the development of his work is very apparent. His early painting are surprisingly dark in color, as was typical of Dutch artists of the time, and it was not until he went to Paris that he started experimenting with the vibrant colors that make him so well known (neat to see having just visited Paris). The museum also had sketches and studies, particularly interesting with his line and brushstroke experiments, and records of correspondence with his brother Theo that gave an insight into his life and a context for his paintings. After visiting the Louvre's inconceivably vast collection, it was really interesting to focus on one amazing artist's ouevre from start to finish.

After visiting the Van Gogh Museum, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around along the canals. Throughout the city, we encountered Amsterdam's most ubiquitous public art exhibit, "Elephants on Parade". Over a hundred painted baby elephants are on display throughout the city, each designed by a different artist. The elephants are scheduled to be auctioned off later this month, and the proceeds will benefit Asian elephants. I liked this one because the artist painted a map of the city on its back - the blue parts are the canals and the red parts are the buildings. The campaign reminded me of similar shows in the US - the cows in New York, and the Mr. Potatoheads in Rhode Island.

More public art? Refer to Max's previous post for an explanation of this curious green spiral.

We finally made our way back to the train station and hopped on our overnight train to Lucerne, Switzerland. We paid for a cheaper 6 berth option, and luckily were able to sleep in a compartment with only 4 beds (imagine trying to fit 2 more beds in this space). Though a little cramped, I actually slept very comfortably until our couchette-mates exited the train at their stop in Germany at 4 am. The next time we woke up, we were in Switzerland!

Paris in Photos

Sorry the posts are out of order - our internet has been inconsistent and the blog has suffered as a result!  We will try harder to stay current as we continue.

To accompany Max's lovely color commentary, here are some pictures to go along with our voyage thus far.

In contrast to Max's feelings about the city, I really enjoyed Paris.  It's full of very elegant, old buildings and monuments, all magnificently situated alongside the Seine.  Only one skyscraper stands in the city center, and the rest are outside in the suburbs - without these modern urban essentials, I really felt like we were walking through history!

After watching the sun set over the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower on our first day, we spent our second day at the Louvre.  The Eiffel Tower is a tough act to follow, but the Louvre lived up to the hype.  

Not only did we see the Mona Lisa and the other masterpieces housed in the museum, we also got to learn about the history of the palace itself.  An excursion to the basement allows visitors to see the Louvre's original purpose as a medieval fort, built to guard the city from invaders entering by way of the river.  There are also rooms dedicated to palace life at the Louvre.  The Napoleon III apartments (though they actually belonged to his secretary of state) showed the opulence and elegance of France's monarchs a few decades ago.

Dad, I thought of you when I saw this guy throwing chlorine in the pools outside of the Louvre.  The water was crystal clear!

On our third day in Paris, we were awakened by an angry lady telling us in French that we had to get out of the room so that she could clean.  We went to the front desk thinking that it would be no problem to stay another night, we found the hotel to be completely full.  Left without options in central Paris, we relocated to the lively neighborhood of Montmartre atop a hill overlooking the city.  Full of delightful creperies and whimsically winding streets populated with performers like this one, this new setting was a pleasant alternative to the city center.

Montmartre is also home to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, an exceptionally large church that is said to house the heart of Jesus Christ.  It's also the home to a spectacular view of the city.  The magnificence of the basilica combined with the exceptional vista make it a destination for both tourists and locals alike.

Unswayed by this lovely location, Max took the stairs leading up to the basilica as an opportunity for some shut-eye.  See if you can find him here.

Happy to be in Montmartre.

The view from our seat on the stairs.

Max practicing his snooty Frenchman impression.  I actually thought most of the people were pretty nice, except for the aforementioned cleaning lady, who had reason to be cranky with us.  Our first foray into the city from the airport found us outside of the Louvre-Rivoli metro stop with no idea how to get to our hostel.  With map spread open, searching for our destination, we were conspicuously lost.  Within a minute were approached by an elderly lady with her own map, looking to guide us.  Granted she was originally from Argentina (but had lived in Paris for the past 20 years) and she couldn't tell us where to go, but it was a nice welcome to the city.  We found similar hospitality throughout the city as we were often lost and asking directions.

While Max was resting, I took the afternoon to explore more of Montmartre.  I wandered through the neighborhood's beautiful and very large old cemetery, full of late 19th century tombs and funereal statues.  After seeing the burial sites of French chanteuse Dalida and a coincidentally named Alexandre Dumas (unfortunately not the Three Musketeers author), I meandered down the street to the Moulin Rouge.  As any fan of Baz Luhrmann's production would be, I was disappointed.  The sterile exterior and cold mechanical windmill totally lack the charm and whimsy of the establishment immortalized by Toulouse-Lautrec.  Price for dinner and a show: 180 euros.

After meeting up near the Arc de Triomphe, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking down the Champs-Elysees and admiring the sunset over the Seine.  It was a much improved sight after our cloudy first afternoon in the city.

Sunset from the Pont Alexandre III.

View from the Jardin du Tulieres to the Place de la Concorde's Luxor obelisk and the Arc de Triomphe.

We spent our fourth day at Versailles.  We hadn't had much trouble with tourist crowds elsewhere in Paris - no lines at the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre - so we were surprised and overwhelmed at the number of people swarming the palace interior.  The extravagance of the palace was exceptional, but the construction on the front facade and ambiguous renovations to rooms and artwork throughout were distracting (not to mention the crowds, again).  When we got outside the palace and saw the gardens however, we were immediately won over.

The palace grounds are enormous and amazingly landscaped, divided by canals punctuated by fountain filled pools.  In contrast to the palace itself, the grounds are peaceful and relaxing.  Kids can ride ponies through the tree-lined promenades, nautical enthusiasts can row boats through the canals, and bikers and walkers enjoy the trails.  People and geese also sprawl along the shores to take advantage of the thoroughly relaxing and unbelievably beautiful setting. 

That basically sums up our time in Paris.  I'll add Amsterdam's photos in a bit so you have a visual complement to Max's eagerly awaited R-rated post!

Amsterdam, G-rated

Backpackers' Lucerne Hostel, Lucerne, Switzerland; September 24th, 2:18 pm

The fact that I’m sitting in our hostel in the middle of the day in Swtizerland writing the blogpost about Amsterdam perhaps says more about our experience in the real city of sin (sorry Las Vegas) than the following post ever could. I had neither the time nor the interest to blog about Amsterdam while we were there; now that we are safely nestled up in the wholesome Swiss Alps, I have neither the energy nor the inclination to do anything but blog about Amsterdam.

Ever since we got on the train last night, I’ve been debating how I should describe the very important piece of the backpacking experience that the Dutch capital provides, with the knowledge that parents, grandparents, and impressionable little sisters might read my description. Here’s my solution: I’ll provide two versions of the Amsterdam story, one G-rated version (this post) and one R-rated version (the next post). Before any mothers fast-forward to find out what sort of trouble their children got into in the R-rated version, you should know that the R-rating stands for sex, drugs, and maybe even a little rock-n-roll.

Amsterdam was a huge improvement on Paris for me. Not only were prices a little more reasonable, but the city was also COMPLETELY different from anything I’ve seen in America. I’ve never been to any place that felt so fundamentally foreign. The architecture, the urban layout, the signs, the people, their dress, their behavior—nothing in Amsterdam would fit into the American cultural landscape. Unlike Paris with Manhattan, the closest I can come to a comparison point for Amsterdam is a combination of Epcot and Pleasure Island at Disney World. My only complaint was that we didn’t stay long enough for me to figure out whether this fantasy-land feel was an affectation to rake in tourism dollars or the outgrowth of a genuine cultural gap. I think it was a combination of both, but the foreignness extended so far and yet seemed so outrageous that I’m still not sure. As a perfect example, in an apparent attempt to avoid the Parisian olfactory problems, the Dutch have installed big green spirals on almost every street corner in which men can urinate freely. They look like free-standing dressing rooms with a small hole in the middle of the ground. And people use them! Sober people! I used one in the middle of the day, and no one gave me any funny looks. How can any country be that unrestrained in their approach to solving problems? Imagine the contrast between a town hall meeting in Oklahoma City and the Dutch meeting that produced this idea.

Amsterdam town hall meeting:

Dutch citizen: “Our whole city smells like pee because the people who don’t have 30 cents to use the bathroom simply use the sidewalk as their bathroom.”

Stoned Dutch guy from Amsterdam: “OOO I have a great idea! Let’s put spirals with pee holes in the middle all over the city so that people don’t pee on the walls.”

Stoned Dutch Mayor: “Hey! That is a great idea! And while we’re at it, let’s legalize prostitution to prevent the spread of vinereal disease and decriminalize marijuana so we don’t fill up our prisons with our pot dealers. Then, we can tax all this stuff so that we can pay for universal healthcare! That was easy.”

Or maybe the chronology was more like:

Irritated Dutch Mayor: “Now that we’ve legalized pot and prostitution, we have a bunch of stoned backpackers peeing all over our streets. Let’s build some free-standing stalls they can stumble into so we can at least keep the smell manageable.”

American town hall meeting:

American citizen: “Poor people are peeing on the streets because we somehow started charging 30 cents to use the bathroom.”

American mayor: “Okay. Let’s stop doing that.”

American Democrat: “But then how will we fund our struggling school systems?”

American republican: “We won’t, but at least our streets won’t smell like urine.”

In bizarre contrast with the sex and pot shops, Amsterdam is also home to some magnificient art museums, including the Vincent Van Gough museum. I had inherited a fascination with the tortured artist from my dad, and this museum provided me with a great opportunity to explore my curiosity. The collection boasts over 200 of his paintings along with several thousand drawings and letters to complement them. Although we didn’t see any of his truly jaw-dropping pieces, witnessing his genius develop as we toured the rooms holding a chronological series of his pieces proved far more enjoyable than standing behind twenty other people waiting for a glimpse of Starry Night in New Haven last year. That work actually becomes all the more impressive in the context of his tragic life. Before he got to Paris in 1885, Van Gough was really struggling to find himself as an artist. He hated traditional styles even then, but he still used the very dark color schemes common in the Netherlands at that time. Furthermore, he hadn’t learned to embrace his technical shortcomings; his sense of spatial relationships were almost as bad as mine. In fact, every piece on display from this period looked like something I might have produced trying to mimic Van Gough if I only had brown, black, and grey paint. Then, just when I was starting to doubt whether this pillar of modern art had any talent at all (I have doubted that about most other modern artists), we moved into the gallery of paintings from his time in Paris, where he had met Henri Toulouse-Lautrec among other artists budding on the forefront of modernism. Especially as we had just spent a week in Paris, where classical French styles continue to dominate at the Louvre and Versailles, Van Gough’s vivid colors and rapid, thick brushstrokes seemed just as novel and fresh as they did when his sister-in-law began to introduce his oeuvre posthumously to the wider world.

We also went to Vandel Park, which was mostly beautiful, although parts were wrapped in hideous construction fencing. Unfortunately for you concerned mothers out there, that's about the only experience from Amsterdam that make it into the G-rated version. If you would prefer to skip the next post, our hostel in Switzerland has an 11:00 pm curfew and the higher-than-Parisian prices have prevented us from doing anything but walk around. The Lucerne post should be a little bit tamer.

Leaving Paris

Sorry we've been so terrible about updating thus far. Solid wifi connectivity has been surprisingly difficult to find in Europe. This continent is so forward yet so backward in so many ways. I've just been writing posts in Word documents, and I'll probably continue uploading them in bursts every few days.

Thaly Hi-Speed Train; September 21, 11:51 am

FINALLY leaving Paris! On our way to Amsterdam! OMG! Spacecakes and sex shows! Ellie is psyched.

We were supposed to leave Paris yesterday afternoon, but apparently we were not the only ones wanting to escape that godforsaken city. Every train going anywhere was full. Literally. Or so the haughty little Frenchman at the ticket counter claimed. When we told him we wanted to reserve seats on the next train to Amsterdam, he started cackling and shaking his head maniacally as if to suggest we might never get out of Paris alive. I suspect he just enjoyed holding a couple of Americans hostage. At least the train whisking us away moves quickly. Traveling over at 150 mph, we should be in the Netherlands within a couple of hours. Special relativitY makes a lot more sense at this speed.

Like most of the other travelers we’ve met, I’m not the biggest fan of the French capital. Call it culture shock, but rude people and outrageous prices ($5 cokes are a telling benchmark) considerably diminish the glory of the Mona Lisa and Notre Dame. I continually forgot that the mighty Euro enjoys almost a 1.5 to 1 ratio over the poor American dollar because the prices in dollars always seemed reasonable for a big city. $4.80 for a Starbucks Frappaccino? That sounds about right… Wait a minute… That’s seven hundred and five pennies! For a Tall! The second day I was here, my debit card wouldn’t work at the Louvre; so, accustomed to the eagerness with which Mexican businesses had accepted the greenback in Puerto Vallarta, I proudly pulled out my friend Benjamin Franklin. The clerk tilted his head to the side with a mixture of disdain and pity: “Non.”

In addition to the extortionary prices for goods and services, the French also charge for what would (and should) be free in America. Refill at McDonalds? $3. Admission to a world-class art museum? $15. Use of public restrooms? $1. Getting out of a city that wreaks of urine? Priceless… Actually, it was $100 on top of the $1500 we already spent for the Eurorail pass. Never thought I’d say this, but I miss Manhattan.

Parisian prices and discourtesy aside, we have had a great time in Europe thus far. Our two nights atop Montemarte provided phenomenal vistas of the truly beautiful city. The royal gardens at Versailles (which were free!) more than compensated for the teeming crowds. And the Met really doesn’t have much on the Louvre. Yesterday we were walking through these bustling little marketplaces on our way to see Notre Dame, and we stumbled into this beautiful park sitting in the shadow of the largest cathedral in Paris. Despite all of its history, Notre Dame seemed like a bit of a letdown after uncovering this unknown (even by my encyclopedic father) artifact of past French magnificence right in the heart of the city. Ultimately, these pleasant surprises redeemed Paris for me. Almost.

Amsterdam! OMG!

Day One: Paris

Cafe Jacques; Paris, France; 10:02 am (4:02 am EST)

Paris!  We saw the Eiffel Tower!  OMG!  Here's a pic:

As you can tell by the picture, it wasn't the most romantic initial outing in the city's illustrious history. We flew in yesterday morning on a red-eye.  Don't get me wrong: Lufthansa is by far and away the nicest airline I've ever flown.  But those British Airway commercials had given me pretty unrealistic expectations about overnight, overseas travel.  As it turns out, you don't actually just get into a bed in the middle of Boston Common and wake up in the same bed underneath the Eiffel tower.  Instead, you're stuck in an upright seat in the middle of a row of eight other sleep-deprived people, who will stare daggers at you if you even try to get up for the bathroom in the middle of the night.  While they do serve free beer and a great dinner on the flight, it comes at 1:00 am, and you eat it as quickly as possible so they'll take it away and you can fall back asleep.  Even so, the flight really was wonderful in comparison to previous airline experiences.  And now, having used a $35 Brookstone face mask and equally pricey ear plugs sleep twelve hours in the hostel (I leave it to Ellie to describe why these items were so essential), I'm pleased as punch to be sitting in a French cafe in the city of lights.  

Overall, Paris really doesn't seem that much different from major cities in the US considering that it's a millennium older, on a separate continent, and all the signs are in French.  You have a subway, a couple of rivers, lots of people, and some monuments, but for me, the subtle differences have proven more  interesting than the broader similarities.  Just a few examples: the airport and subways have moving ramps, not escalators; the locks rest in a horizontal rather than vertical position (we spent five minutes fighting with the key yesterday before figuring this out); all the cars are hatchbacks, and public buses carry the "prestigious" Mercedes logo; the first floor comes above the ground floor (thus, our room 531 is six steep flights of stairs from the entrance); a .5 liter (18 oz) of coke costs 3.30 euros ($4.85).  Yes, I bought one.

I've rambled on for quite a while now.  Ellie just sighed audibly as she looks longingly at the Louvre up the street.  I doubt my other posts will last nearly this long, but I am so excited to be here!  Paris!  OMG!  Here's another pic!

Max