canals + tulips aka TFIOS

Let it be known that I did not enjoy The Fault In Our Stars like every other person and their mothers. It was a sad story, but it also pissed me off because what teenagers were that eloquent and witty and why wasn't there an Augustus Waters equivalent when I still believed in romantic mush like that? And how pretentious was that unlit cigarette metaphor. GUH. Nevertheless, I do applaud you John Green for tugging at my heart strings about Peter van Houten's backstory. He was the only part I liked.

If you're wondering what else John Green got right, Amsterdam is damn romantic though. I would love to go back. I almost went back before I came back to California (but bank account statements said otherwise). Yes, the allure of, shall we say, illicit activities is an attraction of this city, but it is not the only one. I am so smitten.

Fun fact: the average height of people in the Netherlands is much much much much much taller than Christine or I. Emerging from the train station, we immediately had to seek out a map. The only one we found, however, was very very very much taller than either Christine or I. Mattie, the only one who could probably comfortably read this map, was on her own quest for a toilet. Using my camera phone to snap pictures of the taller regions of the map, and Christine using her hawk eye abilities to locate which areas to take pictures of, we got a good system of pointing and picture-taking going. We turned to the sound of "Um, excuse me do you guys need help?" and were met with the very entertained looks of two very tall, very blonde Dutch men.

Another thing you don't see on this video: we went back for stroop waffle McFlurries at least three times in the span of two days. Also not on this video: we went to the red light district and had a crazy night involving a couple prostitutes. Kidding. But we went and it made us feel kind of sad.

I am a little obsessed with tulips, by the way.

tourist waffles

We started the trek to Brussels early in the morning. So early, in fact, that the hostel had not yet put out breakfast. St. Christopher's Inn next to Gare du Nord has the best bread and butter. I thought I was going to marry all of the bread and butter in France. By "marry", I mean consume. Anyway, being denied early access to breakfast, Mattie, Christine, and I headed to Gare du Nord, stomachs empty and anxious to find our train. If you're wondering where Maxine is, we had to abandon her because her love of French lingerie kept her detained. We got to the station much too early, so the logical thing to do was have Christine run (literally, run) back to the hostel to grab an entire plastic bag of bread. She ended up slipping, scraping her knees on the well-paved streets of Paris. You can take the girl out of France, but then France will try to maim her. Paris is feisty. The bread was really good though.

Once in Brussels, it was also too early for anything to be open. With Mattie's data-enabled phone (everyone, take note that AT&T sucks and T-Mobile is the only one who understands study abroad needs) and a shitty map in hand, we made our way through the fog to the hostel. Understand that up until this point, we'd been enjoying balmy -gasp- mid-sixty degree Fahrenheit weather. That, to us, was like a SoCal summer after having been in the UK for four months. So off into the cold we go, finally finding refuge in our hostel. This hostel was luxury compared to what we had been staying in. PRIVATE BATHROOM + ONLY THE THREE OF US IN THERE. By this destination, we had walked about 10+ miles a day, so we were ready to have a chill day in Brussels.

Apparently, you can do Brussels in a day, and we had this nifty map to tell us how. The highlights of this have to be us wandering around for cheap Chinese food in Belgium and somehow wandering into a very interesting market place. This particular marketplace was peculiar because everyone was only there to watch it end. Once it ended, a lot of the vendors actually gave away a lot of their wares for free or abandoned it on the ground. Or maybe the highlights of this leg of the trip was scarfing down cheap uncooked convenience store veggies because we are cheap and had a bouquet of pommes frites earlier (fancy fries/chips to you) and dancing contemporary dance in our beautiful, private hostel room.

Whatever the case...pay attention to those waffles in this video. Gor-geous.