MICHELE'S MUSINGS

Our main reason for going to holland was to visit Patricia and Balthazar. We met them in Nepal ...and kept bumping into them repeatedly in the weeks that we were trekking. While we were up in the himalyas eating rice and lentils, Patricia fantisized about the delicious Dutch apple pie with whipped cream she could get at home......mmmmmmm, sigh. Well, They took us to this cafe in Amsterdam, and she was right, this might have been the best apple pie I have ever experienced (except yours of course mom). Amsterdam is an interesting and unique city. The houses line the canals (which for a wagon wheel network around the city) and are narrow and tall---this is because originally they were taxed on the footprint of the house, so this was a way to get around paying high taxes. Thestaircases are so steep in some cases that they are more like ladders than stairs. We did the obligatory walk thru the red light district. Prostitutes sit in windows with red lights shining on them (hence the name), beckoning the tourists tojoin them. Coffee houses abound. Smells of marijuana perfume the air. In amsterdam you buy coffee in a cafe, and soft drugs like hash and pot in a coffee house. .For a change of pace we decide to go to a comedy show called Boom Chicago (in English) which was quite hysterical. They did a skit on houw tourist put their life on the line to cross the street in Amsterdam....dodging the endless stream of trams, and bicycles on the road which they somehow also share with cars. It has the feel of utter chaos. We saw at least one bike car collision and many close calls. We brough the sun with us as we travelled, as they hadn’t had anything but rain that month. We visited the largest gardens in the world, the Keukenhoff gardens on a glorious day. We saw striped fields of tulips stretching to the horizon in all colors and hues. There were also imprissive wooded landscapeswith ponds and thick carpets of flowere in all directions. The only downer in Holland was when Patricia was pick pocketed on the tram. The culprits hang out on the lines most heavily touristed...like the ones to the museums. The culprit tried Drew first and failed, a guy on the tram warned us to watch our because he thought he saw the guy try to get in Drews fanny pack...then Patricia checked for her wallet and it was gone (here she had travelled all over nepal and India without problem and was robbed on her home turf). By her good Karma the crook only got away with 30 cents, and her wallet with all bus and train passed was later returned to her by the police...with a myserious extra grocery list inside. We spent one night in the south of Holland, a narrow finger of land wedged between Belgium and Germany, in a town called Maastricht. It was a pritty Medievil town divide by a wide river. We slept on a funky boat converted to a hotel...

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page