the past weekend was kind of a long one. i went to all my classes on wednesday and then came home to pack it up and leave for the weekend. after class, i got back to corso trieste and cooked myself lunch and took my time to get ready since my flight wasnt til kinda late. so i got to the airport fairly early since i didn't have much of anything to do in rome and took off for paris! im kinda proud of myself because i got to beauvais with no problem and then headed into paris where i took the metro from port maillot to marissas apartment and used the codes i had saved in my phone to get into her building and ring the doorbell so that she didnt have to come down. so i actually got to her apartment close to midnight and then we chilled for the night and caught up, though there wasn't much news considering i had just seen her 10 days before. we shared a bed (again...baby.) and then she got up early to leave for class with ariel. i got up around the same but took a short nap after she left and proceeded to get ready to be a real person. i met her and her monuments class in montmartre because they were taking a tour of sacre couer. i know ive been there a bunch of times now, but it was interesting to hear the history behind it and see the details of the architecture and decoration and then learn the significance of those. unfortunately, i have no pictures of this, but ive posted other things about sacre couer so whatevs.
that afternoon around 4 or so, marissa and i left paris on a train destined for amsterdam where we would meet jess. luckily our seats were right near each other and we were able to ask the nice man (who spoke every language) to switch seats so that we could sit together. it took about 4 hours to get to amsterdam and neither of us were successful in napping even though we were both so tired. when we got there, it was already dark and was raining so so hard. also, the directions that our hostel posted on the website were kind of awful so it took us a good while to find it in the pouring freezing rain. i also had my 3 euro umbrella which served us quite well but regardless, it was a pain in the ass. so we find out hostel which is SLAP in the middle of the red light district (as our map informed us) and checked in before heading back to the station to get jess. our hostel wasn't actually smack in the middle of the red light district, but whatevs. i think they consider our area the red light district cause there were so many cafes and all the restaurants were open late. the main streets that are known for prostitutes and strippers and such was actually a few minutes walk from where we were. so anyway, we went back to get jess and then had a delicious argentinian dinner at a steakhouse. one thing that i really loved about amsterdam was that it was so diverse and, consequently, had so many different kinds of food to choose from. anyway, after dinner, we dropped off jess's backpack in the hostel and took a walk around the city. though not much of anything was open on thursday night, it was such a pretty city with all the little canals and everything was lit up. here's the one picture i have of one of the bridges all lit up at night.
that night, we just hung out in the hostel lobby/bar/lounge thing to talk and catch up since we havent been together in forever. before this weekend, i hadn't seen jess since jerry's birthday (which was for like 20 minutes) and marissa hadn't seen her since july 4th. of course i had already visited marissa in paris and i also saw her in new york right before we both left for europe.
the next morning we got up fairly early and had breakfast in the hostel. the breakfast was eh but there was some decent granola which is always filling. it also had very lightly sweetened raisins in it which is pretty much one of my favorite things ever so that made me really happy. since it was such a nice day we decided to do a canal cruise. along the damrak, they have a few canal cruise lines that take you on a cruise of the city through the canals. it's mostly to view the architecture and to see the city from a completely different point of view. it was so pretty and the city is so pretty with all the canals and cute narrow buildings. here's a houseboat we saw parked along the canal.
and this is another one.
and this is a pretty view from the cruise (strikingly similar to the friendship in disney world, but not quite the same).
this is one of the prettiest views from the cruise. from here, you can view a full stretch of a canal with seven different bridges.
so amsterdam has 348239482309482394823904823 bikes, and that is not exaggerating. it's actually quite efficient, but pretty much everyone has a bike and rides it around the city as the main mode of transportation. this is one of the multi-leveled bicycle parking garages we passed on the cruise.
and here's marissa and me chillin on the wannabe friendship.
we got out pretty early from that since the ride was only about an hour long and headed over towards the van gogh museum. it's the most visited museum in amsterdam so it also gets really crowded if you go later in the day. it was definitely an incredible museum because it had so many of his original works as well as related works by gaugin and others. van gogh's actual paintings were really cool because they had so many of them that they were able to tell the story of his career as a painter and show the evolution of his techniques as he matured and studied art as an expression. this isn't one of my own pictures, but this is one of my favorite van gogh paintings that we saw in the museum. it's a painting of van gogh's bedroom in arles.
here is a picture of the rijksmuseum, the big museum in amsterdam that showcases the golden age of the dutch through art. it houses a lot of rembrandt, but we didn't go in cause we weren't quite as interested and didn't really feel like doing another museum.
after the van gogh museum, we found a delicious bagel place and got bagels. FREAKING BAGELS. can you tell that we're stupid americans? well, we're not so stupid it's just that our respective countries don't have much diverse choice when it comes to american food. sure, you can get hamburgers and spaghetti (which is supposed to be italian but has also become quite american) but when it comes to things like bagels, you just can't compromise...you have to accept. so then we had our delectable bagels and walked around the city some more to do a bit of shopping. marissa and i were on the hunt for boots and jess was on the prowl for sneakers (pumas/asics or something of that nature). we probly viewed at least 5000 different pair of shoes within a few hours but didn't find anything we wanted. so the "heineken experience" closed at 6 so we decided to head over in that direction to check it out. after getting a bit lost, we found it with plenty of time. this is me and marissa outside the brewery.
so we go in and it only costs 10 euro to have a self guided tour, three beers, and a special gift upon exiting the brewery. when going to the first room telling of the history of heineken, they have a cute lil set up with fake bars with the heineken sign outside. here's jess and marissa in front of one of these sets.
so we take a stroll around and see how heineken is made and get to touch barley and all the silly little things that go into learning how beer is made. after a few minutes, we hit a mini-soarin'. it was actually a simulation ride where you stand on a platform and watch the bottling process from the point of view of a bottle while the platform moves accordingly. it was so corny and silly but it was totally awesome cause i got to at least pretend like i was on a ridiculous ride with my hands up.
this is me and marissa waiting outside for the ride to start with the lil heineken showcase.
after we finished our little adventure we hit bar numero uno where we were given our first beer. the heineken is definitely so much better in holland than it is in the united states. besides that it was so so so so cold, it was just like so amazingly good. anyhow, after the first bar, we hit another ride that was a simulation ride also. in amsterdam, there is a horse carriage that rides through the streets all day pulling (probably) fake kegs of heineken. so the ride was a simulation of the carriage ride. they had the same warnings as mission space (people who are pregnant or have high blood pressure should not ride on this ride), but mission space is deadly and this ride was silly. so then we did a bunch of heineken commercial watching was cute and then continued on our merry little way. after that lil area, there was an area where you could send video messages to your friends and family from the brewery. first, we made one for danielle and then we made a silly one for my two sisters. this is the one we sent to my sisters.
http://www.heinekenexperience.com/vidEmail.jsp?uid=2388330F791469F60DD87BCF96FA6639&vid=lisa171106165532.WMV&host=hexperience3.bitmove.tv&format=wmv
there was also this lil singing and dance along that you could email to your friends and family. this is so silly.
http://bluescreen.bitmove.tv/bitmove/cgi/receive.jsp?uid=252A4050352450B48EC3DFD799227EED&format=wmv
there was also a video messaging station that was inside what was supposed to be a huge keg of heineken. this was our first attempt at a picture with the keg, but jess is blinking.
after, we asked someone else to take our picture with the keg so that jess wouldn't be blinking. this is what he produced. notice how i'm not even in it.
again, we found another nice american couple this time who actually took a picture of all three of us AND the keg.
here's marissa and jess with one of the old vintage heineken ads they had hanging in the brewery.
and here's the same picture we have everywhere else in the world we ever go (minus danielle).
we quickly hit bar number 2 where we were given 2 more beers to enjoy. i ended up hitting up the store to get myself a heineken experience shirt (since it was so super fun) and a really really corny gift for someone at home. i wasn't in the right mindset, but whatevs theyre both really cute. here's the three of us enjoying our third and last beer before getting kicked out of the brewery. of course, we didn't forget about our gift upon exiting and got a cute little heineken experience bottle opener that came in a souvenir tin shaped like a bottle of heineken. it was actually really really cute. and its wallet sized so it sits in my wallet with my IES id.
for some reason, i have no other pictures but the second day we headed over to the anne frank house which was really cool to see. it's pretty well preserved (minus the furniture since the government seized their furniture after arresting all of them). they also had her original diary as well as original letters written by otto frank after the liberation. when nick asked me how the anne frank house was the first thing i said (which is kinda funny that it's the first thing i thought of) is that the stairs are really steep. way to go, lisa. after the anne frank house we went in quest of the frank gehry building that we originally thought was in amsterdam but eventually found out that it's in prague (which all three of us are going to for the same weekend). so we hit up the museum of modern art and decided that everything we did that day was just ridiculously depressing. this is a picture jess took of a view of the city from the docks near the museum of modern art.
we headed back to the jordaan area of the city where we found a cute lil pancake place (unsure if this is dutch food or not) and had pancakes for lunch. jess and marissa got apple pancakes (more like crepes than pancakes but not quite crepes) and i got a cajun chicken one. they were all delectable and we ended up staying at the same place to have coffee and pie for like hours. it was a really cute place and it was quite chilly out so it worked out that we stayed for so long. there's marissa and me at the pancake place.
we were going to try and find a windmill a little out in the city but it ended up being cold and dark so we just hung around the city for a while. we stumbled upon a cute little indonesian place for dinner and ended up having amazing asian food and drinks for a few hours as well. as jess and i have decided, she really likes eating and sitting and talking to her buddies. and i agreed with all of the above. so after that, we sat in the hotel lobby/lounge thingy and talked and enjoyed our last hours together since jessie had to get up very very early to leave for the airport. we headed to bed around 1230 and jess left the hostel a little before 7 and marissa and i (though we didn't have to) left the hostel around 8 or 830 and headed to the train station to be sure we got there in time and had time to get bagels. so we got bagels and caught our train...it took me 12 full hours to get home. we left amsterdam at 10 am, got to paris at 2 where i caught the RER to orly airport and waited a few hours for my flight. then i got to ciampino where it took me forever to catch a shuttle to termini where i met nick so that he could come over and we could finish our italian project. by the time nick was gone and i could shower and unpack and not be so disgusting it was like 1030 pm.
well anyway, i had quite the amazing weekend being that i finally got to spend time with my jumbos again (minus danielle who will be here in rome so so soon). i missed them more than i will ever be able to express in words and getting to spend time with them and seeing that almost nothing has changed and we still have all the same inside jokes and everything is good between us was pretty much the best and most comforting thing ever. not only did i enjoy my weekend, but now i'm looking forward to going back to tufts and living with my three best friends.
so it's now monday evening and thursday evening danielle will arrive in rome to enjoy a wondrous thanksgiving dinner with my roma friends. we planned this big (relatively, of course) feast of roast chicken, mashed po's as jesse likes to refer to em, stuffing, green beans and an array of vegetables, and pumpkin pie. just to add to the feast we might make pasta? who knows, really...and then were all going out for my 12:01 to celebrate my transition out of adolescence. yeah, as of right now i have 4 more days of being as old as the teenage mutant ninja turtles so i'm a little sad that my status as a TMNT is expiring but eh i'm not as depressed as i thought i would be. i'm much more sad that i don't get to spend my birthday and thanksgiving with my family as i do every year, but it's cool cause my cousins (really my cousin and her husband...no, my cousins did not marry each other) are meeting us in dublin so it's going to be a blast anyway.
alright well that's it for now...ill post about my birthday and dublin after the weekend probably.
that afternoon around 4 or so, marissa and i left paris on a train destined for amsterdam where we would meet jess. luckily our seats were right near each other and we were able to ask the nice man (who spoke every language) to switch seats so that we could sit together. it took about 4 hours to get to amsterdam and neither of us were successful in napping even though we were both so tired. when we got there, it was already dark and was raining so so hard. also, the directions that our hostel posted on the website were kind of awful so it took us a good while to find it in the pouring freezing rain. i also had my 3 euro umbrella which served us quite well but regardless, it was a pain in the ass. so we find out hostel which is SLAP in the middle of the red light district (as our map informed us) and checked in before heading back to the station to get jess. our hostel wasn't actually smack in the middle of the red light district, but whatevs. i think they consider our area the red light district cause there were so many cafes and all the restaurants were open late. the main streets that are known for prostitutes and strippers and such was actually a few minutes walk from where we were. so anyway, we went back to get jess and then had a delicious argentinian dinner at a steakhouse. one thing that i really loved about amsterdam was that it was so diverse and, consequently, had so many different kinds of food to choose from. anyway, after dinner, we dropped off jess's backpack in the hostel and took a walk around the city. though not much of anything was open on thursday night, it was such a pretty city with all the little canals and everything was lit up. here's the one picture i have of one of the bridges all lit up at night.
that night, we just hung out in the hostel lobby/bar/lounge thing to talk and catch up since we havent been together in forever. before this weekend, i hadn't seen jess since jerry's birthday (which was for like 20 minutes) and marissa hadn't seen her since july 4th. of course i had already visited marissa in paris and i also saw her in new york right before we both left for europe.
the next morning we got up fairly early and had breakfast in the hostel. the breakfast was eh but there was some decent granola which is always filling. it also had very lightly sweetened raisins in it which is pretty much one of my favorite things ever so that made me really happy. since it was such a nice day we decided to do a canal cruise. along the damrak, they have a few canal cruise lines that take you on a cruise of the city through the canals. it's mostly to view the architecture and to see the city from a completely different point of view. it was so pretty and the city is so pretty with all the canals and cute narrow buildings. here's a houseboat we saw parked along the canal.
and this is another one.
and this is a pretty view from the cruise (strikingly similar to the friendship in disney world, but not quite the same).
this is one of the prettiest views from the cruise. from here, you can view a full stretch of a canal with seven different bridges.
so amsterdam has 348239482309482394823904823 bikes, and that is not exaggerating. it's actually quite efficient, but pretty much everyone has a bike and rides it around the city as the main mode of transportation. this is one of the multi-leveled bicycle parking garages we passed on the cruise.
and here's marissa and me chillin on the wannabe friendship.
we got out pretty early from that since the ride was only about an hour long and headed over towards the van gogh museum. it's the most visited museum in amsterdam so it also gets really crowded if you go later in the day. it was definitely an incredible museum because it had so many of his original works as well as related works by gaugin and others. van gogh's actual paintings were really cool because they had so many of them that they were able to tell the story of his career as a painter and show the evolution of his techniques as he matured and studied art as an expression. this isn't one of my own pictures, but this is one of my favorite van gogh paintings that we saw in the museum. it's a painting of van gogh's bedroom in arles.
here is a picture of the rijksmuseum, the big museum in amsterdam that showcases the golden age of the dutch through art. it houses a lot of rembrandt, but we didn't go in cause we weren't quite as interested and didn't really feel like doing another museum.
after the van gogh museum, we found a delicious bagel place and got bagels. FREAKING BAGELS. can you tell that we're stupid americans? well, we're not so stupid it's just that our respective countries don't have much diverse choice when it comes to american food. sure, you can get hamburgers and spaghetti (which is supposed to be italian but has also become quite american) but when it comes to things like bagels, you just can't compromise...you have to accept. so then we had our delectable bagels and walked around the city some more to do a bit of shopping. marissa and i were on the hunt for boots and jess was on the prowl for sneakers (pumas/asics or something of that nature). we probly viewed at least 5000 different pair of shoes within a few hours but didn't find anything we wanted. so the "heineken experience" closed at 6 so we decided to head over in that direction to check it out. after getting a bit lost, we found it with plenty of time. this is me and marissa outside the brewery.
so we go in and it only costs 10 euro to have a self guided tour, three beers, and a special gift upon exiting the brewery. when going to the first room telling of the history of heineken, they have a cute lil set up with fake bars with the heineken sign outside. here's jess and marissa in front of one of these sets.
so we take a stroll around and see how heineken is made and get to touch barley and all the silly little things that go into learning how beer is made. after a few minutes, we hit a mini-soarin'. it was actually a simulation ride where you stand on a platform and watch the bottling process from the point of view of a bottle while the platform moves accordingly. it was so corny and silly but it was totally awesome cause i got to at least pretend like i was on a ridiculous ride with my hands up.
this is me and marissa waiting outside for the ride to start with the lil heineken showcase.
after we finished our little adventure we hit bar numero uno where we were given our first beer. the heineken is definitely so much better in holland than it is in the united states. besides that it was so so so so cold, it was just like so amazingly good. anyhow, after the first bar, we hit another ride that was a simulation ride also. in amsterdam, there is a horse carriage that rides through the streets all day pulling (probably) fake kegs of heineken. so the ride was a simulation of the carriage ride. they had the same warnings as mission space (people who are pregnant or have high blood pressure should not ride on this ride), but mission space is deadly and this ride was silly. so then we did a bunch of heineken commercial watching was cute and then continued on our merry little way. after that lil area, there was an area where you could send video messages to your friends and family from the brewery. first, we made one for danielle and then we made a silly one for my two sisters. this is the one we sent to my sisters.
http://www.heinekenexperience.com/vidEmail.jsp?uid=2388330F791469F60DD87BCF96FA6639&vid=lisa171106165532.WMV&host=hexperience3.bitmove.tv&format=wmv
there was also this lil singing and dance along that you could email to your friends and family. this is so silly.
http://bluescreen.bitmove.tv/bitmove/cgi/receive.jsp?uid=252A4050352450B48EC3DFD799227EED&format=wmv
there was also a video messaging station that was inside what was supposed to be a huge keg of heineken. this was our first attempt at a picture with the keg, but jess is blinking.
after, we asked someone else to take our picture with the keg so that jess wouldn't be blinking. this is what he produced. notice how i'm not even in it.
again, we found another nice american couple this time who actually took a picture of all three of us AND the keg.
here's marissa and jess with one of the old vintage heineken ads they had hanging in the brewery.
and here's the same picture we have everywhere else in the world we ever go (minus danielle).
we quickly hit bar number 2 where we were given 2 more beers to enjoy. i ended up hitting up the store to get myself a heineken experience shirt (since it was so super fun) and a really really corny gift for someone at home. i wasn't in the right mindset, but whatevs theyre both really cute. here's the three of us enjoying our third and last beer before getting kicked out of the brewery. of course, we didn't forget about our gift upon exiting and got a cute little heineken experience bottle opener that came in a souvenir tin shaped like a bottle of heineken. it was actually really really cute. and its wallet sized so it sits in my wallet with my IES id.
for some reason, i have no other pictures but the second day we headed over to the anne frank house which was really cool to see. it's pretty well preserved (minus the furniture since the government seized their furniture after arresting all of them). they also had her original diary as well as original letters written by otto frank after the liberation. when nick asked me how the anne frank house was the first thing i said (which is kinda funny that it's the first thing i thought of) is that the stairs are really steep. way to go, lisa. after the anne frank house we went in quest of the frank gehry building that we originally thought was in amsterdam but eventually found out that it's in prague (which all three of us are going to for the same weekend). so we hit up the museum of modern art and decided that everything we did that day was just ridiculously depressing. this is a picture jess took of a view of the city from the docks near the museum of modern art.
we headed back to the jordaan area of the city where we found a cute lil pancake place (unsure if this is dutch food or not) and had pancakes for lunch. jess and marissa got apple pancakes (more like crepes than pancakes but not quite crepes) and i got a cajun chicken one. they were all delectable and we ended up staying at the same place to have coffee and pie for like hours. it was a really cute place and it was quite chilly out so it worked out that we stayed for so long. there's marissa and me at the pancake place.
we were going to try and find a windmill a little out in the city but it ended up being cold and dark so we just hung around the city for a while. we stumbled upon a cute little indonesian place for dinner and ended up having amazing asian food and drinks for a few hours as well. as jess and i have decided, she really likes eating and sitting and talking to her buddies. and i agreed with all of the above. so after that, we sat in the hotel lobby/lounge thingy and talked and enjoyed our last hours together since jessie had to get up very very early to leave for the airport. we headed to bed around 1230 and jess left the hostel a little before 7 and marissa and i (though we didn't have to) left the hostel around 8 or 830 and headed to the train station to be sure we got there in time and had time to get bagels. so we got bagels and caught our train...it took me 12 full hours to get home. we left amsterdam at 10 am, got to paris at 2 where i caught the RER to orly airport and waited a few hours for my flight. then i got to ciampino where it took me forever to catch a shuttle to termini where i met nick so that he could come over and we could finish our italian project. by the time nick was gone and i could shower and unpack and not be so disgusting it was like 1030 pm.
well anyway, i had quite the amazing weekend being that i finally got to spend time with my jumbos again (minus danielle who will be here in rome so so soon). i missed them more than i will ever be able to express in words and getting to spend time with them and seeing that almost nothing has changed and we still have all the same inside jokes and everything is good between us was pretty much the best and most comforting thing ever. not only did i enjoy my weekend, but now i'm looking forward to going back to tufts and living with my three best friends.
so it's now monday evening and thursday evening danielle will arrive in rome to enjoy a wondrous thanksgiving dinner with my roma friends. we planned this big (relatively, of course) feast of roast chicken, mashed po's as jesse likes to refer to em, stuffing, green beans and an array of vegetables, and pumpkin pie. just to add to the feast we might make pasta? who knows, really...and then were all going out for my 12:01 to celebrate my transition out of adolescence. yeah, as of right now i have 4 more days of being as old as the teenage mutant ninja turtles so i'm a little sad that my status as a TMNT is expiring but eh i'm not as depressed as i thought i would be. i'm much more sad that i don't get to spend my birthday and thanksgiving with my family as i do every year, but it's cool cause my cousins (really my cousin and her husband...no, my cousins did not marry each other) are meeting us in dublin so it's going to be a blast anyway.
alright well that's it for now...ill post about my birthday and dublin after the weekend probably.
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