>From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 00:22:56 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 25th: Arriving in Amsterdam! We woke up this morning to a cloudless blue Swedish sky over Vaxjo. What a stroke of luck! Our final day in Scandinavia will be sunny. We had breakfast and moved our still-damp laundry outdoors into the sun. We sat around outside on the patio, watching the 76 year old millionaire working on the Citrom's lawn (he doesn't like sitting around being retired...). It was really nice and relaxing. We took advantage of the weather to snap some photos of the Citrom house from the outside, and also got a couple of interior shots. When it came time to leave, the Citroms INSISTED we take a bottle of wine with us "for the road," we really couldn't refuse. We're saving it for the train from Amsterdam to Paris, though. On our way to the airport in Vaxjo we stopped off at the factory started and built by Georg Citrom. We didn't have time to go in and look around, but Michael did get a picture of the building, anyway. Finally we were at the airport. The Vaxjo airport was a bit bigger than the Kirkenes airport, but not that much bigger. We flew out of there on a prop jet, as Hillary's Uncle Jeff had predicted. It was a Fokker 50, originally introduced in 1955. The flight was pretty smooth, although a patch of turbulence made Hillary leave some dents in Michael's arm. We arrived in Copenhagen (AGAIN) after a routine half hour flight. Today it was a lot nicer weather-wise, and we were able to get some really nice views on the way down. Thiws time, though, we didn't leave the airport. We just did some more shopping :) Our connecting flight to Amsterdam came in on time, left on time, (with us on it), and landed a little bit early in sunny, pleasant Amsterdam! We headed out to find our baggage. Dutch customs, btw, didn't stamp our passports (as Sweden hadn't) but they DID check them (unlike Sweden) - they seemed to be able to scan them or something. We got our stuff, changed our leftover Swedish money to Dutch Guilders (fl), and looked for the train information center. You see, there are trains connecting the airport to Amsterdam's Central Station (the big train station in town). We wanted to take one but we weren't sure how it worked with reference to our Eurail passes and stuff. We found the information center and figured everything out. We waited on platform 2 for our train. It was kind of interesting - they use the international trains as commuter trains b/w the airport and the train station - so the train we took to Central Station was really a train to Hanover. The train ride took about 15-20 minutes. We thought we should make our Amsterdam --> Paris reservations before leaving the station, so we did the whole "take a number" thing and after a number of false starts (because the Dutch railway ticket workers seem to have a "the customer is a captive audience, they need us, we can be as lame and slow as we want, they will still buy their train tickets" attitude), we confirmed two spots on the train for Sunday. After that, we hopped into a taxi for a ride to our hotel. The hotel Galaxy, where we are staying, isn't really in the center of town. What you have to do is either: take a taxi (this was about $13), take a bus, or take a ferry and walk. The walk from the ferry dock is about 15 minutes, and the ferry itself comes about every 5 to 10 minutes and only lasts 5 minutes long, so that's not so bad. When we got to our hotel, we had the kind of check-in you'd expect from one of those Chevy Chase Vacation movies. We've learned that most hotels in Europe, when you reserve a "double," have the option of giving you "the big room with two twin beds smooshed together" or "the small room with a big double bed." The thing is, they always do the first option by default - so then we have to switch rooms and stuff. Grrr. But we end up ok in the end, so that's ok. We finally got everything organized here and we went out to see the city. We took the walking plus ferry option to get back into the main part of town, and then we walked from Central Station south into a touristy area where there were a lot of restaurants and stuff. We were charmed by the canals here in Amsterdam, and by some of the very old "canal house" type buildings which line some of them. These are very tall, pointy-roofed, narrow, row houses of brick. The bridges that go over some of the canals are also very picturesque. We got ourselves all the way south to the Woodersvein (or something like that) and then we found a place to sit and have a coffee (well, Hillary had coffee; Michael had an Oranjeboom). The place (called the Green House) was really cool. It had a very funky front room, and the outer wall had all kinds of tiles on it, and inside near the back they had a little garden area set up, with a fake waterfall, and benches with pillows on them - and their bathroom, of all things, had a mosaic of broken mirror and colored tiles, with lots of flowers and things. We took a photo of the bathroom but it will probably be much less spectacular than the actual bathroom. (anyone think there is a market for a travel guide of "Interesting Bathrooms of Europe" ??) Having worked up an appetite doing all this bathroom photography, we thought we'd walk back the way we came and go to this particular restaurant that we'd passed on our way south. But, that didn't work. We thought we were retracing our steps, but then we didn't ever see that restaurant. But, we found a different restaurant, and it turned out to be great. We'd been hoping to try some of the acclaimed Indonesian food here, but ended up in a Thai place where we had a really good meal. After dinner we had more coffee, and then decided to turn in. It was still pretty light out and we wanted to get back to the hotel before it turned much colder, as the afternoon had been quite warm but now it was cooling down. We walked back to Central Station, went behind it to the ferry docks, waited for the ferry, took the ferry, etc etc. We finally got back to the hotel, and we figured we'd better start writing some of this down or we'd forget it all! Today seemed like a very long day, because we had so much time doing stuff in Vaxjo before we left, and we also spent a lot of time here doing stuff. We're thinking probably tomorrow we'll do a quick bus tour or something and then check out the Jewish Museum, Anne Frank's house, that kind of thing. It depends on the weather though - we hope it stays nice! that's all for now, Hillary and Michael >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 11:14:00 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 26: Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore! Before we get started on today's adventures, there's something we forgot to mention before. The people in Amsterdam are *obsessed* with the World Cup, to a degree thus far unmatched anywhere we have been. When we were entering the airport from the airplane at Amsterdam's Schiupol Airport (where smoking is allowed only in designated areas, unless you are Dutch, in which case you smoke where you damn well want to smoke and anyone who doesn't like it can piss off), we walked through the flight gate and into the waiting area - in which there were about thirty people, who all suddenly stood up and cheered really loudly, in unison. At first we thought they were just some kind of bizarre dutch welcoming committee, but then we realized they'd been watching a World Cup match, and something had happened that they liked. Boy, this place is strange! It's so jarring to see signs on the cafes telling customers to: Please roll your joints inside! But, we've seen a lot of that so far. This morning after breakfast we walked to the ferry terminal, took a ferry into town, and started walking around to see what we could see. We checked out part of the red light district, as we'd been told to look at it during the day when it was safer. We saw many of the famous Amsterdam "coffee shops" where coffee isn't the main attraction. If some of you are unclear on what IS the main attraction at these shops, let us clear that up for you. Pot. Weed. Marijuana. Oh, also, hashish. These places have menus and everything - it's very surreal. We walked around in an area where there were many of these shops, and we looked at some of the promotional materials in some of the nearby stores where they sell drug paraphernalia and so forth. It's hard to read Dutch when you don't speak Dutch :) but we gathered that there is a faction here working toward recognition of marijuana as a medicinal substance, and another faction here working toward recognition of marijuana as something fun to do. We think the second group is winning, based on the local activity we saw when we stopped to have a coffee in one of these places (just to see what was going on!). Also worth noting were the sex shops. These were surreal as well. Videos, magazines, comic books, regular books, posters, knick knacks, dildoes, fake vaginas, fake boobs, fake women (various kinds of inflatables: nurse, teacher, schoolgirl, etc), leather harnessess, even PLAYING cards, for heavens' sake! It was interesting, anyway. We strolled along one of the canals for a bit and then returned to the Damrak, the main street perpendicular to Central Station, where there are a number of tourist shops, coffee shops, tour excursion centers, and also a Museum of Torture (which we photographed, but didn't enter. Too scary for us - although, we might have gotten some good ideas of things to do to annoying Net Access customers. Hmmm. There's always tomorrow...) Then we booked ourselves on an afternoon bus tour. We also got a short canal tour with it, which we decided to do first. The canal tour was really cool. We cruised through a number of canals and got great views of: - the Merchant Canal: lined by mansions, formerly owned by rich people but now generally office buildings and banks - the Old Harbor, which was the original harbor here but which is no longer big enough for the ships to unload from - lots of 17th century canal houses, which remind us a lot of philly rowhouses, except they are narrower and have gables with large windows at the top, which is how they get the furniture in and out of the upper stories (staircases are too narrow, you see.) - some architecturally interesting 16th and 17th century warehouses, which we sadly didn't photograph - the Jewish Quarter, which isn't really original anymore due to lots of new construction. The diamond polishing centers are still here - the Jews who originally settled here were (many were) diamond merchants. South Africa, back then, you recall, was a Dutch Territory, and when the big diamond mines there were found, the diamond industry in Amsterdam really took off. Also in the Jewish Quarter we saw some kind of black stone monument with gold writing on it in hebrew - we have no idea what it was for, though. Also in this area is the new Opera House, a really ugly round building covered in what looks like white bathroom tile. Speaking of bathrooms, we saw another interesting one today, with Heineken taps for sink faucets - but we didn't get to photograph that one, sorry :) - Rembrandtsplein - from the canal we could see the statue of Rembrandt, which was built in 1876 in the middle of this park area. - a defense tower, with a 15th century base and a 17th century tower - really interesting brick work on this tower! - lots of other stuff! We learned on this tour that the Central Station was built on a man-made island. The stuff across the canal from it used to be oceanfront property! Now, the entire city is facing Central Station, and kind of radiates out from it. The canals form semicircles around it. The city is very disorganized - the streets are not laid out well, probably because the city is so very old, and because they have 100 canals and about 1000 bridges - and because many of the streets are really, really, really, really narrow!! In fact, in many areas, you might think you were on a pedestrian walkway - because everyone is walking through it - until a car comes inching down behind you. Also, the city is several meters below sea level! There are a number of sluices which keep the water from overflowing the dams and getting into the city. The city is very beautiful and if you should come to Amsterdam, we can wholly recommend the canal tours. Note also that we were very lucky with the weather today. It has rained here for 2 months straight, and we've gotten the first two partly cloudy/ partly sunny days in a long while. BTW - if you're into this kind of thing you might be interested in knowing that "Holland" isn't the name of this country - it's the name of a province which contains Amsterdam. So you have Amsterdam, federal capital of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, within the province of Holland, and you have Der Hague, capital of Holland province. That's kind of weird. Our guide mentioned that also the football fans at the world cup games shout out "Hol-land, hol-land" even though there is no Holland team, there is only a Netherlands team - that's like going and shouting "New York" or "Ohio" when rooting for a US team! She said this just goes to show you how disorganized these people really are. After our canal tour we walked around some more - we found an interesting shop that had an internet terminal, but someone else was using it. We stopped for some french fries - you have to be careful getting those here, the Dutch seem to like them with mayonnaise glopped all over them, and if you don't say something, It Could Happen To You. After that we had our bus tour. This was another example of Dutch Anarchy, as we like to call it. No one is in charge, no one has any information about anything, then all of a sudden everyone is running somewhere and you are trying to figure out what's happening. Once the bus started moving, we were fine. However, the tour guide was not. Perhaps she had been in one of those coffeeshops? She couldn't remember her own name! She also seemed to hear voices, because at one point she said "what? wait a second. someone is talking, and it isn't working. but I will continue." It was strange. However, she was an excellent tour guide, and gave a delightful commentary regarding the sights we saw. She expounded on drugs and prostitution for quite a while, bemoaning the fact that the Amsterdam government (which she implied was rather "oppressive") had taken it upon itself to allow soft drugs and prostitution, and that the "man in the street" such as herself can't do anything to change it, so her fair city is getting a really bad reputation. She also remarked that the prostitutes used to be here for the many sailors who came to port, but that now they are here for "you people" meaning us, the tourists! Hmm. Speaking of prostitutes, there are many of them, standing in their windows with a little red light shining down on them. You can have your way with one for fl 50 (about 25 bucks), so we're told. We saw many fat, ugly, bored looking professional women standing in leopard print G strings and fluorescent bikini tops during our meander through this area today. Our tour guide pointed out to us a round, squat, tower, sitting on what used to be oceanfront property. This was called "the Tower of Tears" because this was the building in which women would say goodbye to their sailor men, and the building in which women would wait for the men to return, and perhaps be told by the crew of the ship that one particular man didn't make it back (or, find out that the whole ship didn't make it back!) So a lot of crying went on here. Our tour also took us to see a water-pumping windmill (very picturesque, with nearby ducks), and into a diamond factory! The diamond factory of course was in the Jewish Quarter. We got some instruction about diamond quality and worth, and how they cut and polish them, and stuff like that. They also showed us a bunch of jewelry that was for sale, and Michael nearly gave Hillary a heart attack by continuing to pick up different diamond rings, and saying "I like this one, what do you think?" She finally had to tell him to cut it out. Following the diamond shop stop, there was another chaotic boarding of the bus and then we wrapped up the tour with a look at Dam Square. Dam Square kind of cordons off the area of the University from the Red Light district. This square contains the WWII memorial, which interestingly was just returned to Amsterdam 2 months ago from Germany, where it had needed to be sent for cleaning! The memorial is built out of soapstone, and had suffered staining and water damage, and the Germans apparently have the only facility in the world that can clean and restore soapstone. So, the Amsterdam folks debated it for a while and finally decided to send it. It looked good to us! Do you believe, the Germans had the gall to charge for the cleaning?? Also in this square is the Royal Palace (although it isn't really used as a palace these days), the Coronation Church (which is currently in use as an exhibition center to show stuff about Queen Victoria), and the Amsterdam Post Office, a really striking building which is no longer a post office, but which is in use as a shopping mall. We told you this place wasn't organized!!! Sort of near this area, but not quite, there is a Flower Market which we got a glimpse of from both the canal boat and from the bus. If time permits we'll check it out more closely tomorrow, but for all the hype and everything, it didn't seem as impressive as the one in Stockholm, based on today's taste of it. After our tour, we hopped on a tram to head over to Leidseplein - the theater district. What's this about a tram? Well, we bought these tickets called "Circle Amsterdam" which allow us unlimited use of all available public transportation in Amsterdam for two days. We figured we'd need it what with needing to get through the tunnel and all at the end of the day, anyway. So we hopped on a tram (trolley to you) and were swiftly carried to our destination. Of note regarding the trams is that a) they work on the honor system in that no one actually checks your ticket routinely, b) if you are caught without a ticket you must pay fl 60 (about 30 bucks) or c) show them photo ID and fill out paperwork and pay more later, or even d) go to the police station and get in trouble. Also, they run in two directions over the same track in some areas, so it is difficult to try to cross the street and stuff in an area where a tram runs. The Leidseplein is a square at the end of Leidsestraat. It contains a number of bars, theaters, and so forth. We noticed a football tree covered in orange streamers with soccer balls "growing" in it. There were some performers in the center of the square who seemed to be preparing to juggle some chain saws (that were turned on!) But we had no time for such frivolity - we headed into "Nonsense" to get our tickets for Boom Chicago! What's Boom Chicago, we hear you cry. Well, Boom Chicago is a group of 9 Chicagoans and an Australian, who perform improvisational comedy shows here - similar to the shows done by ComedySportz above Montserrat on South St in Philadelphia, but of course not quite the same. They are widely acclaimed (at least, we'd heard of them before) and we were in the mood for a laugh or two. They turned out to be very funny. They really had the "american in amsterdam" experience down pat. They did a great sketch about some college kid coming here and at first being afraid of drugs and then getting really stoned by smoking some hash and having a paranoid freak out. They also did a really funny bit about some americans getting killed by trams, and having to pretend to be Dutch to be able to cross the street - and then figuring out that the ubiquitous bicycles (which really are VERY numerous here, as Amsterdam is entirely flat so it's easier to bike than in other places) are actually working in cahorts with the evil two-way trams in a conspiracy to mow down wayward Americans who take up valuable space here in overcrowded Amsterdam. They also did a really funny improv where they sang songs, in the styles chosen by the audience, about something chosen by the audience. They ended up having to sing about respectable sex in the style of "jungle music, swing, and rap" and it was hilarious. Amsterdam really is overcrowded, btw. It's so overcrowded that people have taken to building houseboats and parking them in the canals. It's so overcrowded that it is routine for people to sit down at the spare seats at your table, wherever you are. Furthermore, although we haven't personally seen the problem, the crowding allegedly contributes to a large pickpocketing problem. After the comedy show, we went back to the Red Light district just to get a look at it "by night," if you will. The canal bridges were outlined with little red christmas lights (the ones outside the district get white christmas lights). The prostitutes were more numerous, and some of them were actually NOT fat and old. In fact, some were neither fat NOR old! They still all looked bored, though, and only one or two percent of them were actually "good looking". They just sit there in these chairs with their legs spread or their boobs hanging out, waiting for work to wander in. One thing they have here in Amsterdam is a plethora of Live Nude Girls and Live Sex Shows. It is kind of like New Jersey, in that way. We debated whether or not we should check out a Live Sex Show. It seems pretty silly to pay for watching people do something like that...doesn't it? But then again, we hear the girls do these things with bananas and cigars.... hmmmm. Still, the US Navy seems to think it is ok for their sailors to watch these shows - we saw plenty of these guys hanging around trying to see if they had enough cash to get into one. At about 11, it was getting darker and we figured we'd head back to the hotel. It was a really long day and tomorrow will be longer! We have a list of museums we want to see, surely there isn't time for them all but we'll see what we can do. We need our rest, though! TTFN, Hillary and Michael >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 17:44:17 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 27th: Amsterdam - ARGH!!! Ok. First of all, we *are* having an excellent time! That said, it is worth mentioning that not only is the city of Amsterdam very disorganized, but also, everything runs late! Each bus or tram or train or boat ride we've gone on has failed to begin on time - usually things run 5 to 15 minutes late. We are not sure exactly why this is - it could be that everyone's stoned all the time, or it could be that the people in charge know that all of their customers are stoned all the time, so they delay so the teeming masses do not miss their buses...or, it could just be a very laid back attitude in general. Hard to say, really. Amsterdam is perhaps the most immediately *livable* city we've been to so far. Absolutely everyone in town speaks English. The natives are all at least bilingual, and many of them speak many more than 2 languages. The people who work for the public transportation division all speak at LEAST Dutch and English - most also speak German and French, some speak Italian, Spanish, Pakistani, etc. Even the losers who have jobs standing in front of the places that have Live Sex Shows, the guys who stand on the sidewalk and try to get tourists to go in and watch the shows, speak at least four languages - one of these guys flabbergasted a group of Israeli tourists by speaking to them in Hebrew, the other night. Anyway, enough about that. Other cool things about Amsterdam include the fact that despite the departure from the times printed in the timetable, the public transit seems very reliable and there is very complete coverage of the city. There are a lot of theaters - stage and cinema - and there are a lot of ethnic restaurants, which we love, and there is good coffee here, and there are some cool street performers - and there are ISPs, and plenty of dogs, so we could find work! But don't worry, we're coming home soon :) Oh, also - cats are very popular here. Our guide told us yesterday that 9 out of 10 homes in Amsterdam have cats! They even have a special cat museum here. Today we slept in and then headed out for a day of culture. We had high hopes for being able to see a bunch of museums - but, our ambitious plans fell victim to the two real problems with this city - one, complete lack of organization, and two, crappy weather. First we took a bus from a stop near our hotel over to Central Station (this bus was late, of course, but that was ok, as it was nice out this morning), and then we got on the Circle Tram 20 and took it over to Westermarkt. This is the area near Anne Frank's house, Westerkerk (a 17th century church), and the Homomonument - a monument to the Gay and Lesbian people who were killed by the Nazis and also to those people in more recent years who have succumbed to HIV related disease. We were dropped off by the tram directly in front of the Homomonument - which is itself directly behind Westerkerk - so we tried to check that out first - however, the entire square housing the monument is heavily under construction, and so we couldn't get a really good look at it. Mainly it was two separate pinkish polished granite triangles in the square, proper, and one other triangle with steps from the sidewalk down extending into the canal next to the square. There was some writing in Dutch on one of the triangles but we couldn't tell what it said. There was a lot of sand and dust flying around, and construction barriers all over, so we really couldn't even photograph it, unfortunately. We continued around the corner to get to Anne Frank's house at number 263 Prinsengracht. We were dismayed when we saw a line that wasn't really moving at all, extending far from the door. It looked like it might take well over an hour to get to the front. So we checked out the general area. The construction zone between 263 and the corner had a plywood barrier blocking it, next to which people were standing in the line waiting to get into the house. The barrier had a number of pictures hanging on it - paintings done by children, it looked like. Each had a caption in several languages, something like "the right to play" or "the right to grow up" or "the right to live." At the end of the line of pictures was a title "The Rights of Children." It was very uplifting and somewhat depressing at the same time, what with it being so close to the spot where one child didn't have any of those rights (which we are sure was the point, but still.) In front of the house was a small bronze statue of Anne, which we photographed. We also took a picture of the house itself - a brown brick building, nothing different about it from the many other houses lining this canal. Hillary noticed a young (15 yr old?) girl standing in one of the windows, smiling brightly down at the crowd on the sidewalk. That kind of gave her the creeps - it didn't seem like a particularly happy place to her. We decided not to go in - we've both read Anne's diary and she gave very vivid descriptions, so we feel we know what it would be like in there without spending two hours in line for a five minute chance to know for sure exactly what it was like in there. After that, we were hungry. We had some trouble trying to find a place to eat. We couldn't decide what to eat, where to eat, how to get there - we were confused by the trams running two ways on the same track, and the situation was detiorating rapidly when suddenly a bus appeared that looked like it would take us back to the Leidseplein (where we saw Boom Chicago), so we hopped on that and it worked! When we got to Leidseplein, those same street performers from before were there and the guy was actually juggling the turned-on chain saw at this time. We stayed and watched the whole very funny and impressive show - the usual juggling of fire, 7 foot unicycle street performer kind of act - with an amsterdam twist, because one guy stripped down to a leopard print bikini - and since they were good, we gave them some money too. Then we were REALLY hungry so we found what looked like an excellent Indian restaurant, went in, and chowed down. We were correct - it was an excellent Indian restaurant. We've been told that the Dutch do not really consider themselves to have a national cuisine, per se - rather, they have appropriated as their own the many ethnic cuisines available in their cities. That works for us! After lunch, we waited around again for a late tram, and then got on one that was heading toward the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a monument to the memory of Jews deported from this site during WWII. When we got there, it was raining. We figured out where the monument was and jogged there to avoid getting drenched. Unfortunately, the exhibit itself had closed for the day by this time, but we checked out the building - a nondescript, large white marble building - and read some of the information. Apparently during the course of WWII, about 80,000 total Dutch Jews were forced to meet at this building, where German Soldiers would round them up and march them to the train, for deportation to concentration camps. Ugh. After this, we'd wanted to go see the Joods historisch museum (the Jewish Historical Museum) but it was really raining hard. So, we hopped back on the tram to go back to Central Station, waited for the bus back over to north Amsterdam, took the bus back to the stop near the hotel, and made a mad dash through the rain into the Galaxy Hotel. It's too bad the bus stop isn't a tiny bit closer, or cabs a bit cheaper (from Central Station to the hotel the first day was about US $13.00) When we got here - we looked like drowned rats by then and the girl in the elevator laughed because our hair was all wet, but we didn't care. We're hoping it clears up, so we can go out this evening. TTFN, Michael and Hillary >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 23:23:11 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 27/28: nous allons a Paris! Well...you remember, it was a rainy day in Amsterdam, and we'd returned to the hotel. We hung out and watched old American movies on TV (well, Hillary did, while Michael took one of his famous naps). By about 8:45 the rain had stopped and it was actually kind of sunny out, so we decided we'd try to find this Ethernopian restaurant we'd heard about. (South Park reference, FYI - we DO know how to spell Ethernopian. We just choose not to.) We walked out to the bus stop but since it's Saturday, the buses in this area only run every half hour, and we weren't at the right time, so we walked down to the ferry dock, and crossed to Central Station that way, then took a #2 tram south of the Leidseplein a ways. We found the Addis Ababa restaurant there, and the menu was unfortunately in Dutch. We were able to figure out what things were based on the ethernopian part of the text, though :) The food was very good and we enjoyed ourselves a lot, although we feared for our lives every time the server came near us because she carried things extremely precariously. We survived without incident, we're sure you're happy to know. After dinner, we took the tram back to the Leidseplein, thinking we'd walk around the cinema district and check out the late night party action around here. There were a million people out and that meant half a million bikes piled up on the sidewalks. Dutch people are really into biking! Also, starting at about 11 PM, there is a very large, very visible police presence here in Amsterdam. They just stand there on the sidewalk, staring ahead, occasionally chatting people up. Also, some of them sit in cars parked strategically in front of large gathering places. We checked out some of the outdoor cafe type areas, and we wandered along a canal front for a bit. We stopped to see what was playing at a few of the movie theaters - but decided we weren't really into seeing a movie after all - especially after we heard that Dutch theaters tend to insert 15 minute intermissions into the middle of feature films, and that they usually come at a very annoying moment in the movie. Some of the buildings were really cool, though. We stopped and had Ben and Jerry's ice cream cones from the B & J store in this neighborhood, too. It was really good :) and it was crowded too, even late like it was. Finally we realized we were tired (well, Hillary was tired because she didn't get a four hour nap this afternoon...) and headed back to the tram stop. We took the tram back to Central Station, and then tried to find a bus to our hotel - but, since it was about midnight on Saturday night, there was only one bus line left that would go through the tunnel and into the particular part of North Amsterdam that our hotel is in. Therefore, Michael decided we should simply take a cab rather than sit and wait half an hour for a bus. Since it's just a 10 minute drive, it is really annoying to sit and wait for a bus for that long. So we cabbed it, and it turned out to be a bit cheaper than the other cab ride due to decreased traffic. Tomorrow we travel to France. Michael is quizzing Hillary right now on how to say things in French like "we want to go to Hotel X, please" and "how much does this cost" and "why do all you french people hate us americans?" and "that's not real football, that's soccer." That's all for now.