The city was big, in the kind of sense that it was similar to one of the big skyscraper cities back 'ome. We walked around some big churches, and checked out the queen's palace. It was all quite nice. Alas, we didn't partake in any herring as we were already completely stuffed on a buffet breakfast, but we at least got to see how it was eaten (dangled high above the head, chin raised and chomping daintily).
2000 room house, "pool" included. Call now!
They turn their churches into restaurants :D
Well, not this one, but there's a lot of churches.We only spent about an hour or so in the city, but once again we were able absorb the culture around us. Dutch is a really confusing language. With its similar background to english and German, I could always pull out random words, swearing that they were speaking one of the two... every time I looked back, they were still just speaking Dutch. It could be compared to communicating to a really inebriated American, who you could hardly understand.
Fortunately, like all countries that are forced to comply to our "primary" language; we hadn't even encountered a single Dutch citizen who couldn't speak English. Of course, it's not exactly nice to just sit there and assume the fact, so every time we invoked a conversation it started with "Hello, do you speak English?". My only hope is that it was recognized as a friendly gesture, rather than a demand (I've just seen so many people expecting English from everyone, which isn't exactly the nicest thing in the world).
Swinging from one vine to another in the Train jungle, we arrived at the smallish town of Delft. This wasn't exactly my first priority of a city, but Ted was quite interested in seeing it, so rather than breaking apart and spending hours trying to track each other down in the midst of the big city of Amsterdam which we would be going to later, we decided to just head through this city quick. Ted checked out a few churches ( they required some $$$, which I didn't really feel like parting with) and a little while later we were back on our way to the most well known city of the Netherlands.
DelftingI'm not much of an Art museum guy. I'll see one, but it just seems like such a dreadful waste of time unless it's one of the most amazing museums in the world, and I have a ton of days in the location, so I can spend one just slowly wandering about. As a result of this, Ted and myself have been bypassing pretty much every giant museum we've come across.. there was one in Amsterdam however that I really wanted to check out for my own amusement, because really, where else is there one of it?
The Hemp/Marijuana museum was actually pretty interesting. Of course, it primarily was just a bunch of facts that could have just been Googled, but the same could really be said of pretty much any art/sculpture/history museum. It was also pretty neat to see the history behind it, the lack of acceptance and so-on. I'm not really a gigantic druggie advocate or anything, but really, I don't have much of an issue just letting people do what they want provided they don't shoot themselves in the foot, or have a stray bullet glance someone else's.
Pipe types
No... not an episode of Cops... just a legal growing roomUpon exiting, I met Ted waiting outside. As we beseeched the town map, a local netherlander with a camera came up to us. He was curious about what the big deal was with all of the kids coming to europe purely for the netherlands. We ended up talking to him for a while, he was pretty entertaining. Apparently, when he was in the states and mentioned he was indeed a Netherlander, everyone would insist to talk to him about this THC filled wonder, which was something he hadn't ever really thought about back home. So, here he was inquiring to random hashish pilgrims about what the big deal was.
We went to the Anne frank house, and declined paying 20 euro to see a tiny room, but just peeked outside.
This house?or
This house?We also just strolled around the canals some more, all the while dodging cars, bikes, mopeds and throngs of people... unfortunately, when we had our map in hand we were approached by the most sketchy looking of characters... It must have been a benevolent fellow, right? I mean look he decided to point out all these interesting things on the map! What an absolute gem! As his wild eyes glanced back and forth at my pockets and he shoved his face into mine, my hands swiftly took burrow inside of them, nestling quite pleasantly next to my wallet. Seeing he'd been foiled, the fellow changed his tune to being a poor "homeless" fellow, just positively stricken by the drastic times. As a reward for his well playted performance, I gave him a whopping .15 euro, Ted, being a bit more of a philanthropist, gave him about .40 . My only regret? That I didn't ask for a picture of him, that would have been a most fun souvenir.
Afterward, we decided to check out some Indonesian to go, which was pretty tasty. It wasn't the most extravagant place, but man, it was good!
I had really wanted to check out one of these fabled "coffee shops" while I was here. Even to just check out a menu, but its not exactly the kind of thing you want to do yourself. Ted, due to medical reasons, didn't want to enter such a place; and I didn't really want to sit around in that kind of situation in a city that was known for pickpockets and cheats (who mark us green tourists as well.. marks) in a potential stupor state where I could be taken advantage of. Sad day.. well, maybe next time I'm in the country I guess... at least I had gotten some sort of "fill" of this interesting tradition at the museum.
With one long parade wave goodbye, we boarded back onto the train, and back into Harrlem blah blah blah sleep blah blah.
This was going on when we got back. Complete with a churro stand of course.
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