Vive le Montreal

Memorial Weekend 2009, I had all sorts of big travel ambitions: 2 weeks in Spain.  1 week in Mexico.  Africa may or may not have been thrown into the mix as well.   

As logistics foiled my ideas (thank you SWINE FLU), I pared down my grandiose plans to a long weekend exploring Montreal with my good friend Monika.  On the agenda was hanging out, relaxing, and eating our way through this foodie city.  But as American Airlines put a wrench in Monika’s weekend, I ended up on my own with a hotel room twice the size of my apartment in NY, and a whole weekend of exploring “Canada’s Cultural Capital” solo.  5 days of scouring travel literature, peppering my Quebecer friend Line with all sorts of cultural and societal questions, and wandering the neighborhoods, here’s some stuff I’ve noticed.  To sum it all up, Montreal really felt like visiting the Love Child of North America and Europe:

That’s Line on the right.

• It really is true that visiting Montreal is like spending time in Europe.  So much so that I had to keep reminding myself that the 1.5 hour flight I took was not to France, but in fact to Canada.  All around me I heard French.  Round little school boys, hip shopkeepers, the shirtless homeless man with a missing tooth and cans of Natty Light in his pockets, damn it sounded like they were all waxing poetic like Shakespeare or Nietzsche.  Kind of like when you hear Shakira sing in Spanish, then later realize that she is singing about talking to a horse. 

Cute French-speaking school kids on a field trip to Montreal’s Old Port.

 

• I thought I had the language thing covered, since Lonely Planet equipped me with many simple phrases.  However, they neglected to include a key explaining HOW TO speak in French; so thanks to my 4 years of high school Spanish, I naturally began speaking in some sort of unintelligible French-Spanish-English combo.  Really, how was I supposed to know that so many French letters are silent?  (Thank you Line for clearing that up!)  Fortunately, after the customary “Bonjour” followed by a “uhhh… Parlez vous anglais?”, the jig was up on my faking French and we could communicate in English.

This is what happens when you order a meal in a language you really don’t understand.  Poutine: french fries doused in gravy and cheese curds.  My arteries wouldn’t let me consume more than half of this.

One thing I think that really lends Montreal to it’s Euro vibe and keeping it from being as inundated with American culture is the language barrier.  Take music.  A few years ago, in 2004 both the NY Times and Spin magazine dubbed Montreal North America’s “Next Big Scene,” due to bands like Arcade Fire, the Stills, Wolf Parade.  I read somewhere that there are tons of really great French speaking (singing?) bands, but haven’t “made it” because their songs are not in English.

 

Bluegrass band performing at Marche Jean-Talon (a huge farmer’s market not unlike Pike Place in Seattle) 

• Bikes are everywhere.  I love it.  But they aren’t the cute upright one-speed bikes with baskets that I saw all over Amsterdam.  More like 10-speed mountain bikes.  And all over the city there were municipal bikes locked up that you can rent for about $1 an hour.  I tried to find out more about them, but they were so new (like a couple weeks old) that no one seemed to know specifics.  I actually saw the same thing when I was in both Washington DC, and Brussels, Belgium last spring.  And there are talks to have the same in NY.  Color me excited.

• Some neighborhoods, namely the Latin Quarter and the Village are how I imagine New York’s East Village, Lower East Side were like a decade or two ago: burgeoning art scene partially due to affordable rent (when I told Line I pay $950/month she thought that was pretty reasonable…until I clarified that was just MY share of the 3 bedroom).  I haven’t lived here long enough to say from experience, but I constantly read about artists and other creatives being priced out of said neighborhoods, killing NY’s cultural scene.   As my mother taught me, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover; however  I defiitely saw more punks, hippies and artists looking types in the 5 days I was in Montreal than the 3 years I’ve lived in Manhattan.

Near the Latin Quarter. 

  Hackey sacking at the Tam Tam drum circle in Parc du Mont-Royal

 

  Chair outside a boutique in Old Montreal

  Mural in the Village.

Marche Jean-Talon

Tip to effin’ Tip

For some reason, I’ve been wrongly accused of being outdoorsy. If being outdoorsy means walking around in the forest and mountains, not showering for days on end, then no thank you. Now I wear fleece and goretex like any real northwesterner. And I love sleeping in a tent as much as the next person (or maybe more so), but let’s put that tent in the backyard, or 10 feet from the car on a soft patch of grass. And if you get me to the top of a mountain, there better be snow on the ground and a board strapped to my feet. Anyway, when I was still confused (you can blame that on going to a rural hippie school where half the kids were from Montana or Idaho and felt that Seattle was way too fast-paced), I could somewhat easily be talked into going on hikes. I know I’ll get angry rebuttals for saying this, but there are only so many birds hiding in the trees or colorful Indian Paintbrush flowers I can see before I want to get the walk over with already. Even a 3 mile hike is BRUTAL. Kind of like running on a treadmill for 30 mins. But walking around the city? Piece of cake. I could do that all day, simply because there is SO MUCH to look at. Last weekend, I decided to put that theory to work. For the last few years, I’d been wanting to walk the entire length of Manhattan, tip to tip. Mainly for two reason: to prove that it didn’t matter the distance. I could walk anywhere as long as my mind was occupied. And to see the contrasts within Manhattan in the various neighborhoods. So here is a photo essay of my friend Sue Jean and I walking from Tip to effing Tip.

Some stats: Manhattan is 13.7 miles long. From 220th st. in Inwood all the way down to the appropriately named South Street, where the Staten Island Ferry Terminal is located. Because we did not walk in a straight line and meandered throughout Harlem, we estimate the trip was 15 miles long, 8 hours (including lunch and dinner breaks. And lunch at a bar in Morningside Heights takes a hell of a lot longer than pb&j and granola on the side of the trail. Especially when they are showing college football on the HDTVs.)

Yep, that’s the Bronx behind us. We are pretty excited at this point because it’s a beautiful day. And we have no idea what’s instore.

The obligatory graffiti photos. This is in Inwood.

Inwood always up to no good….

Pissed off because I forgot my sack of granola and hiking stick.

Hard to believe this really was in Manhattan (Fort Tryon Park to be exact)

Morris Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights. This is Manhattan’s oldest house and headquarters to General Washington in September and October of 1776. After Washington’s departure, the Mansion played host to a succession of British and Hessian military leaders, served briefly as an inn for weary travelers, and finally returned to its role as country house.

Morris Jumel Mansion’s carriageway, now a row of cute (and I’m sure expensive) apartments.

I wonder if the Sugar Hill Gang wrote rhymes here?!

Hey look- even the wildlife is more diverse in NY! This is a crazy looking black squirrel with red eyes.

Harlem Public School. Once again, yes I really like street art.

W 20th St. 200 blocks into the trip and pretty much where walking 15 miles no longer seemed like a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Sue Jean contemplating whether or not cutting off her feet will make her feel better.

Rachel and Sue Jean’s version of Hell. The never ending journey to the bottom of the seemingly endless Island of Manhattan. My god where the hell is the Staten Island Ferry?! Shouldn’t we have found it oh, like 45 minutes ago?!

Finally! The end! We made it! Sue Jean isn’t really smiling in this photo; she’s actually gritting her teeth in pain from walking 15 miles in flats and flip flops. Side note: the woman who took this photo said she had done the same thing, walking from the UN Building down to Battery Park. Uh NO. Walking from 46th St is NOT the same thing as starting at 220th St, actually.

So did I prove to myself that walking long distances is mental? Did I see a contrast in neighborhoods as we moved further downtown? Yes and yes. 15 miles is an awful long way to walk, no matter where. And somehow we did it. (I definitely spent all of Sunday with my feet up, watching movies and not really wanting to get up to get food.) I did get to see some contrasting neighborhoods. Yes. But no more than I saw wandering all over Brussels last March. I think you could see more so if you were to walk on the east side or throughout Brooklyn (next time ha ha). Until then, I’m going to utilize the subway and friends’ cars more often….

Tennis vs. Baseball: the Showdown

Last Monday I went to my first ever Tennis tournament (unless you count rooting on my friends on the Whitman tennis teams in college, which I don’t think counts since we had to peek at them through the chain-linked fences, not from the cushy stands). Got to see Serena Williams on the women’s side, and Andy Murray on the men’s, in the 4th round of the US Open. And because Arthur Ashe Stadium is across the street from Shea Stadium (where the Mets play), I thought I’d break down attending a tennis match vs. a baseball game.

Category #1 The Crowd
The borough of Queens is one of, if not the most diverse areas in the world. You couldn’t tell that from the crowd at the US Open (Arthur Ashe is located in Flushing, Queens). After spying the 56th pink polo shirt and boat shoes, I realized I was probably rubbing elbows with all of Greenwich and Westport, CT that night. Definitely not the regulars who attend Mets games across the street…Having a quiet crowd is kind of nice. I feel like I’ve had to sit right in front of that really obnoxious guy one too many times at Yankee games. You know, the guy who won’t shut up, even when his team is getting killed. I LOVED that because we were watching tennis, we all had to be as quiet as church mice while they were playing, although it took some getting used to not hearing anything at a sporting event. Funny thing is, I guess the US Open is known for having a low buzz of noise, which I couldn’t hear. Can’t even imagine what Wimbledon must be like. Oh and the best part of the night was that the announcer had to tell the crowd to stop doing the wave. Loved it.

Category #2 The Food/Drinks
If I had been more ready, and equipped with a telephoto lens, I could have taken pictures of people carrying champagne glasses back to their seats (and we were in the nosebleeds!). Also saw many consuming plastic cups with wine. Not gonna lie, I kind of like the idea of drinking wine at a sporting event; it just seems so much classier to sip Chardonnay in a plastic glass than Miller Lite in one of those wax-paper cups.

Although the Billie Jean King Tennis Center is well equipped with many gourmet food options, I still opted for a hot dog with ketchup, which was MUCH BETTER than the shriveled up old wrinkly one I had at Shea two months ago.

Category #3 Designated Hometeam vs. “Hometeam” as an Irrelevant Label
As as displaced Seattle-ite who really cannot stand ARod and dislikes the Yankees in general, it is sooooo nice to be at a sporting event where one can root for whomever and not feel like 99% of the crowd is rooting against them. Like a breath of fresh air!

Go Serena!

Category #4 Amenities
Any American Express card holder can get all sorts of swag at the matches, including a kind of dorky looking, (but so cool to have) radio ear piece, which has a low radio frequency that is simulcast with the TV coverage on USA. Picture a whole stadium of Steve Bartmans. The only free stuff I’ve gotten at Mets games are a plastic cup from the previous season I had to buy a beer to get, and a huge gaudy paperweight replica of Shea Stadium.

Me and the dorky earpiece.

NYC Checklist

I am a west coast girl. Always have been, always will. Since it’s inevitable that someday I will move to San Francisco or Seattle; to never again have to elbow my way through Times Square cursing out the tourists gawking at the tall buildings, haul my 3 weeks’ worth of laundry down the street and through the preppy/fratty Murray Hill-ers clogging the sidewalk as they wait 45 minutes for brunch at Penelope’s, think $6 for a vodka soda is a not a bad deal, and because I’m a dork who loves lists, I’ve started a checklist of things to do before that day arrives. Any suggested additions are welcome…and anyone who loves me enough to read this is of course invited to participate in any of the following (which are in no particular order; and there are links so you know what the hell I’m talking about):

1. Trapeze class on the Hudson River

2. Take a Hip Hop Tour of the city

3. Walk the entire length of Manhattan, tip to tip

4. Join a netball team (because they were short players and training at SUNY-Cortland one summer, my coworker Kaylin, practiced with the national team while she was a student. And she would have participated in the Pan-Am games if she hadn’t had to quit in order to train for basketball. Could this be the sport that finally brings me fame and glory?)

5. Finally attend the US Open (yay!)

6. Take a free class on how to DJ

7. Eat food from the Red Hook, Brooklyn street vendors, supposedly the BEST street food in the city

8. Eat my way through Chinatown in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the “other other Chinatown”

9. Weekend trip to Montreal (kind of off topic, but I stumbled upon the linked Montreal article when my friend Andrea sent me this on Amsterdam, which ultimately sold me on making the city of bicycles and Stroopwafels my 2008 travel destination)

To Live and Drive in LA

So I just got back from from a trip out to Los Angeles for work…and to see my good friend Susan. A

Me being contemplative

few takeaways…

• People are so much friendlier on the west coast. I’ll admit that even though I currently live in what some consider to be a tough city, I was a little intimidated to be navigating Los Angeles on my own. While going through security before my flight back to NY, the security woman
  

  This is Susan

  informed me that there was liquid in my water bottle. Whoops! Rather than having me get back in line and have to go through the whole procession of taking off my belt, shoes, laptop out of bag, etc again, she sent my water bottle through the x-ray while I waited. How nice! And another anecdote: while packing up my beach stuff to head back to my friend Susan’s apartment to meet up with her, an older man next to me made sure to inform me I had some string hanging off my shorts. Well, it was actually that dumb string that is tied around my bikini bottoms. Then he bid me farewell as I walked off. I’m chalking that up to him hitting on me in his own way, but still….

• Los Angeles is such a car-centric society. Because of this, it takes forever to get anywhere. We Seattleites like to complain about how awful traffic is, but there’s a problem when it takes an hour to go ten miles, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. It finally dawned on me why I saw so many helicopters fly over the beach: I’m sure that’s the only way to can get from one end of the city to the other this decade… Some absent-minded lady took my work-friend Heather’s suitcase home with her, all the way to Irvine, which is 45 minutes south of the airport. Or 60 minutes south of Burbank (where we were), without traffic. And because her daughter was getting married the next day in San Diego, she didn’t have time to bring it back to the airport for Heather to pick up. What should have been a 2 hour excursion to the lady’s home in Irvine took FOUR HOURS. AT 2 IN THE AFTERNOON ON A THURSDAY. Because EVERYONE drives. You can’t get around it. Well, except for my hippie friend Susan who bikes and takes the bus. I remember reading in Fast Food Nation a few years back that many drive-through hamburger joints started in LA: (In-n- Out Burger, Carl’s Jr., etc). Totally reflective of how the city really grew during the automobile age.

That's Heather on the right, so happy because she didn't have to wear the same outfit all week

• Everyone is so active. Susan lives half a block from Venice Beach(!). I’ll bet that 75% of residents in her neighborhood surf, play beach volleyball, or go running on the beach almost daily. And I
  

  On the Manhattan Beach pier. I'm having a hard time with the photo settings, so if you can't read it, it says "Misty May-Treanor & Kerri Walsh, 2005 Manhattan Beach Volleyball Champs"

  couldn’t even tell you how many people I passed on the sidewalk, biking to the beach with surfboard in hand. And there is such a sense of community, at least in Venice. There are definitely the regulars that frequent the local breakfast spots.

  

  Muscle Beach

• Cars are a status symbol. What is the status symbol of New York? Your shoes? Metro card? And along this same line, the ABC/Disney/ESPN office in Burbank has assigned parking spots for all employees. The higher title you hold, the better your parking spot. IE Bob Iger has the prime spot, right next to the door. As you get promoted, your parking spot moves. Of course we visitors had to park way up on the roof. But it’s hard to complain about that when its 80 degrees and sunny, every single day.

At the Santa Monica Farmers' Market

You knew I had to take pictures of any graffiti I saw…

Venice Beach

Duckbill Platypus

Okay, as I said before, I’m totally into the Olympics. One of my favorite elements of the games, is the fact that for two and a half weeks every leap year, the world sits on the edge of its chair and waits with bated breath to witness the results of totally obscure sporting events that we would normally not give two thoughts to. I mean, when else do you spend the few hours of free time that you have, sitting on the couch eating corn nuts, rooting on the muscular man in a unitard to throw a heavy metal ball further than anyone else. Or cross your fingers and hope that our country has the most talent when it comes to doing cartwheels on a plank of wood 6 inches thick.

This afternoon, I watched women’s team handball on MSNBC. Hungary vs. Brazil. This has the duckbill platypus of athletics. What, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, etc weren’t good enough? It combines elements from these sports into what could be one really fun gym class activity. Watching it, all I could think about was Ms. Anderson and Mr. Della, my gym teachers in middle school, and all the wacky “sports” they invented to get us excited about being fit and active. (On a side note, anyone from Eckstein remember playing line basketball? Or sitting on a square piece of wood with wheels, rolling around, trying to hit a plastic hockey puck into a goal?) Anyway, I wish growing up, I had had the foresight to get really involved in some niche sport that not many people knew of or participated in, so that one day I too could go to the Olympics. I mean, do you know anyone who plays team handball? And why did I pick basketball, probably the most popular girls sport ever? My football/dodgeball/kickball friend Stan and I decided to invent some new sport that we can kick ass and take names in, get it on the olympic bill (if you can get a medal for jumping on a trampoline, shouldn’t you also be able to get a medal for being the best 4 square player?), and maybe we will be able to one day have a heavy piece of medal dangling from our necks while they play the star spangled banner. A girl can dream…

Why I love the Olympics

Why I love the Olympics…

I love that the Olympics are a microcosm of the world.

In one moment, any given athlete can go from working at Home Depot and living in anonymity to becoming a household name (Rulon Gardner anyone?).

For 1 month out of every quadrennial, sports like swimming, gymnastics, track and field take center stage.

The whole world is watching; athletes can make a political statement.

The Games bring exposure to an area/culture of the world that many Americans (and just people in general) may not normally take note of.

I love seeing people from other countries…when it comes down to it we are all the same.

Not to sell out to corporatocracy, but Nike makes damn good commercials (thank you Wieden+Kennedy).

Afterward

After “How was your trip,” the question I am inevitably asked is “Would you do it again?”. For now, I am happy to be back in NY amongst circles of friends, eating cheap Asian food in Chinatown, playing touch football waaaay uptown, not being forced to listen to really bad Euro pop dance music, etc. But yes, I would travel solo again. Not only did I have conversations with others I probably wouldn’t not have normally talked to, but I also had A LOT of time to observe European culture, and for self-reflection.

But on that same note, I welcome any companions on future trips! And where to next time? Not sure yet, but hopefully a destination just as visually appealing but with much more agreeable weather.

Some other random thoughts:

• The thing I love about the few European cities that I’ve now been to is that they were established before vehicles became such an important part of our society, and consequently are very compact and walkable. Public transportation is amazing, and my favorite part, if you haven’t yet been able to tell, is that everyone bikes. Is there a US city where bikes would be the ideal form of transportation? I’m not so sure. NY is very flat, dense, and most people depend on public transportation. However, when it rains, it rains HARD and who wants to be stuck in that. Also drivers here are crazy; it takes someone with huge cojones to risk their life biking around town (although I just read an article in the NY Times about Manhattan’s traffic congestion problems, which mentioned that Mayor Bloomberg is calling for 504 miles of separated bike paths and 1,296 miles of striped bicycle lanes citywide by 2030). Same with Boston. Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are too hilly (although there seem to be quite a few people in SF who do bike). Cities like Atlanta, Phoenix, LA are too spread out and suburban. Chicago? Maybe…although seasons are pretty extreme in the Windy City. I think that’s why Amsterdam is the ideal biking city: relatively small, streets are narrow, no parking, it is extrememly flat, weather is moderate (although you could have fooled me).
• My 4-hour walking tour of Brussels on Day 2 was supposed to take me through a wide variety of neighborhoods, showing proximity of elegant neighborhoods to working class areas. I’m not sure what I was supposed to see, except that there wasn’t much of a difference between the upper and lower class areas. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ll bet that Belgium and Holland are socialist societies (actually I know that officially Holland is run by the Christian Democratic party), at least compared to the US. Again, in just talking to Richard and Petra, I got the impression that the government really takes care of Dutch citizens. And by legalizing/regulating prostitution and marijuana, both are taxed HEAVILY, with that money going to public infrastructure, etc. I guess my point is that I walked through MANY neighborhoods in Brussels and Amsterdam and didn’t see much of a upper or lower class; it seems the majority fall within the middle class. I also noticed that Amsterdam seemed to be much more ethnically integrated. I didn’t really see “Indian neighborhoods” or “Spanish neighborhoods” but did notice many more interracial couples than I have in even diverse NYC.

This is outside of my hostel. Only in Amsterdam will you find a sign explicitly stating “don’t smoke weed on the premisis” and assume you know that all other illegal substances are off limits too.

• Graffiti/Urban Art. It’s everywhere. On the 3hr train ride from Brussels to Amsterdam, I saw it on just about every building or dike that we passed. And it was really cool artwork. I was hoping to be able to say that the Dutch and Belgian graffiti is a voice of the voiceless, like street art in the Bronx in the 1980s (kind of like a comparison between hip hop today in Cuba and in the Bronx & Brooklyn in the 1980s), but didn’t see anything that could draw that sort of conclusion. So I just took a lot of pictures because I really like street art and am going to surmise that it’s a reflection of the impact of American culture in other parts of the world.

• Americans are LOUD. Taking the train was such a relaxing experience. Smooth ride, trains are clean, passengers talking no louder than a low volume. A far cry from my experiences on the Metro-North or LIRR. And yes I know my saying this is like the pot calling the kettle black…
• The Dutch are much more friendly than New Yorkers. So many times on my trip, someone would just start chatting with me. Even when I pulled out my incredibly large map on the streets of Amsterdam, an old lady who couldn’t really speak much English still stopped to help me out. And numerous people struck up a conversation with me in Dutch, until realizing I am American….it must be the blonde hair that threw them off. Anyway, even the officials stamping passports in customs were friendly, which was so not the case when I got my passport stamped at JFK.

Agree or disagree, these are just things I noticed and wanted to make note of them so I wouldn’t forget.

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Back to NY

Well, today was my last day in Amsterdam, and I have to say that I’m ready to be back in NY. I think I’ve about had my fill of overcast, cold, wet days, hearing the comment “just one?” when I order a ticket for something or sit down to eat, etc. And I can’t wait to not have to pay 40 cents to use a public restroom. Somebody please tell me that this weekend it is supposed to be 65 and sunny in NY…or at least not 34 and rainy.

Today I went to the Keukenhof Gardens, the world’s largest flower garden. I guess it was nice to see what the tulips would look like if they were *actually* in bloom. The shuttle from my hostel took me to the gardens, at 11am, and was to pick me up at 4pm. By 1:30 I had seen all the flowers and 75 year old retirees that I really needed to see and was trying to figure out how I was going to occupy the next 3 hours….FYI- “Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” by Chuck Klosterman is a really entertaining book if you have a few hours to kill.

Yesterday I quickly wandered through the Red Light District…don’t worry Mom it was the middle of the day and there were plenty of other tourists around… Even though I had already been prepared by seeing Brussel’s Red Light Disctrict from the train, the whole thing is just ridiculous. You’d expect it to be down some creepy alleyway, but the street I walked down was along one of the canals, all out in the open. Picture giant windows with girls of varying sizes in lingerie and heels, talking on cell phones. Yes, ALL of them were on the phone…calling each other perhaps? I guess they aren’t too worried about making much money during the day. A funnier story is that I was talking to a couple of college-age German girls I was sharing a hostel room with. They were telling me that they had just been wandering around Amsterdam’s neighborhoods, turned the corner to find all sorts of half naked ladies in store windows and had NO idea where they were until they got out their guidebook. Talk about a shocker if you aren’t expecting it.

-Rachel

I kind of on purpose took this picture with a complete stranger posing (albeit at a different angle) because I needed someone in some of my photos.

The Dutch have an interesting sense of humor when it comes to statues…

Again with the graffiti; even at a flower garden. I love the dichotomy between the “urban art” and the Dutch girl in the corner.

Don’t feel too sorry for me; I did spend one evening hanging out with Andrea and Charlie, two friends from college.

Mmmm….waffles and chocolate sauce. Update: I just discovered that the same store I bought this waffle at (called “Australian”) has a place on St. Mark’s in the East Village! And they are opening another one at 18th & Broadway or something like that. SO worth checking out if you’re in the area. Think Dutch ice cream, chocolate, waffles, cookies, etc.

A Very Dutch Day

Yesterday I felt very Dutch. Spent most of the day on a bike tour out in the country, through the snow. You will not believe how far out of town these bike paths reach. After doing all the typical tourist stuff (pictures in front of a windmill…that people live in!, visiting a cheese/wooden shoe farm), we rode by some ugly corporate offices. The reason I’m mentioning this is because this business neighborhood was purposely built outside of town, in the suburbs. so as not to take away from the charm of the city. A park was built with bike paths to encourage biking to work, thereby preventing traffic jams. I guess I can’t complain about being able to walk to work, but a bike ride through the trees on the way to the office doesn’t sound too bad either. Also saw the windows of the hotel room where John Lennon and Yoko Ono did their week long sit-in, when they didn’t get out of bed till we gave peace a chance (guess they must have finally just given up!).

At the cheese/wooden shoe factory

Amsterdam Hilton- 3rd window down from top left corner is where John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Bed-in for Peace” in March 1969 took place.

At night, I had dinner at a Dutch family’s house, with Richard (owns a B&B and is a musician), his wife Petra (a Marine biology professor at the University of Amsterdam) and their 2 young kids. I would say that this was the activity I was most looking forward to because I’ve been curious to see what exactly it is like to be Dutch. We ended up talking about everything under the sun, which of course included politics, especially the US presidential elections. Sounds like Europeans are really pushing for Obama, or any Democratic president, really. Good thing I had about 3 hours to read the NY Times at JFK before I took off last Wednesday! I could go into more politics, but I haven’t had time to absorb everything we talked about. The big idea that I took away was that the government really takes care of Dutch citizens. If you are not addicted to alcohol or drugs, it’s virtually impossible to be homeless. You will have your own home which will be subsided if needed. Those of us renting NY apartments have it pretty rough, not that I need to say that. Amsterdam has tons of laws protecting renters…how nice would that be.
Also the reason that Europeans know so many languages is because they are required to take multiple languages in school. Not sure how it works in other countries, but Dutch kids have to take English and 2 other languages while in school. They thought it was pretty interesting that I didn’t have to take any language in college and that taking a language in high school was not required (I could be wrong about this; hs was a long time ago) but strongly recommended.

Petra and Richard

Well, I’ve finished my tea and croissant at this cafe, so I should probably sign off. More to come later…

Anne Frank House

I don’t even think that San Francisco has a Homomonument. This monument commemorates all gays and lesbians who have been subjected to persecution because of their homosexuality. Just another example of the tolerance and acceptance that Holland is known for.

Jordaan- a beautiful neighborhood full of charming streets

-Rachel

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