Catching Up

THE NETHERLANDS

Since my last Blog, life has been a complete whirlwind. After traveling through Germany and having to switch trains 5 times, I finally found my way to a dream. My brother met me and we got lost in the matrix that is Amsterdam. It really is otherworldly in so many ways. It's funny because I've never heard anyone give a good description of the city or have anything positive to say about it other than that they'd been there. But, at the end of my travels in Europe, I decided that it was definitely my favorite place visited on this trip. From the tilted buildings, to the never-ending canals, the funky houseboats, and the endless supply of coffee shops, Amsterdam never ceased to amaze me. Every day we ventured out into the unknown with a new direction to explore, only to find every section of the city more beautiful and fascinating than the next. And everyone we met had found a different and amazing coffee shop only no one could remember where it was. We were lucky enough to accidentally stumble upon what I would say was the best coffee shop in town on the first morning we were there. We tried various other shops, but always wound up going back to our favorite, the Dampkring, which was rather small but kind of hidden and had a very chic and chill vibe to it.

The Bulldog has to be the best hostel in the whole city and we were also lucky enough to find that they had space during Gay Pride Week, when the city was otherwise hopelessly full. The dorms we stayed in had 12 beds, six sets of bunk beds, with a school regulation locker for each bed, and one bathroom for the room. I had to gently coax my backpack into the hopelessly narrow metal locker which was no fun for anyone to hear any time I had to get something out of it. Crash, bang, boom!!! But that is the price we pay for staying in a dorm room with 11 other people, I suppose. I have to say that it was definitely the nicest hostel that I have ever stayed in. And their website, boasting that it is the first 4 star hostel, surely does it justice. We made several great friends during our stay there and got to partake in some "Amsterdam coffee" and roam around the city giggling with our new buddies. At least we knew that we weren’t the only goofballs doing that. It was definitely an unforgettable experience.

FRANCE

Paris is incredible during the summer time. Everyone is happily sporting the newest summer trends, sitting at sidewalk cafes, sipping lattes, and soaking up the sun. When we arrived in the city with no map and no real idea of where we were or where our hotel was in relation to the train station, we didn't hesitate to hop into a cab and let the taxi driver navigate. But when he pulled up onto a rather busy street corner and pointed to a sign that said Rue de Caulaincourt and rattled off in french, we sighed and got out of the car with our big backpacks. After some argument with Elliot over which direction to walk and a consultation from the handy dandy iphone GPS, followed by a few stops along the way to demonstrate one of the few phrases I know in French, "Parlaz-vous anglais?", we were finally found the Caulaincourt Square Hotel.

I am definitely incredibly lucky when it comes to selecting hotels over the internet because the Caulaincourt Square Hotel is in an absolutely gorgeous part of the city. The rooms were nice and clean and the internet was free, and we met some awesome people while hanging out with the rest of the internet addicts in the reception. We even came across 3 Ticos that were staying the our hotel. What a small world it is after all.

We had an amazing "tour guide". Our friend, Vallentine, a Parisian resident that we met in Amsterdam, and her younger sister, Alice, were kind enough to show us all the sights in the city and give us the lowdown on the metro system. Her family was visiting from Guadalupe, a French island in the Caribbean where she grew up, and they invited us over to drink wine and eat cheese and visit. They really made us feel at home in Paris and it was great to see the city through the eyes of a local.

On our last night in Paris we made it up to the Eiffel tower to see the light show at midnight. The lines are hopelessly long during the day, but you’d be surprised how few people there are roaming around the tower at midnight. And even though the couldn’t go all the way up to the top at that hour, we made it up to the first platform with our newfound friends from Columbia, Costa Rica, and California and we got to the see the light show up close and personal.

Even though the friends we made in Paris pleaded with us to stay a few more nights, we said goodbye the next morning and caught the train to Arcachon to see our friends from Puerto Viejo. It’s always so surreal to see people I know from Puerto out in “the real world”. It seemed that none of our friends could really believe their eyes to see the Gringos in France, and wearing clothes, no less. Everyone knows us as the beach bums from Costa Rica, always surfing or biking, and in our beachwear covered in sweat. It was a great experience to be able to spend time with our friends in their hometown and on their home beach and see where they are sitting at their computers on the other end of our Facebook chats.

Our friends took us into their home and treated us like family. I still can’t really believe how wonderful they were to us. And even though we had a pretty big language barrier with our friends’ parents, they did their best to make us feel welcome. The mother spoke a little Spanish, so we could make small talk, but the father didn’t speak a word that wasn’t French and didn’t ever seem to understand our rather terrible French despite our best efforts. Our one salvation was the translator application on his super hi-tech cell phone. Whenever he wanted to say something or ask something of my brother or I, he would simply type it into his phone and then show it to us. It really was a laugh since the translations rarely come out saying what he wanted, but we could almost always catch the gist.

So we got to party like rock stars with our friends from France and eat incredible seafood, and lots and lots of baguettes!! We even made it to a couple foam parties, which were pretty outrageous, and had a barbeque on the Dune de Pyla with an almost full moon, which felt like a total out of body experience. We made dozens of new friends in Biscarosse and Arcachon whom we promised we would be back to visit sometime soon and speaking better French. Before we knew it, we’d spent 3 weeks in Biscarosse, hanging out on the beach. And although we had tried several times to head on to Bordeaux or somewhere else new, something always seemed to foil our plans. My theory is that our friends didn’t really want us to leave. And every time we said goodbye, we would then extend our departure for another day or two.

BELGIUM

Eventually we waved a teary goodbye to our crazy French friends and headed back to Paris. With only 10 days left in our backpacking voyage and considerably lighter wallets, we decided to make our way back up to Amsterdam via Paris and Brussels, Belgium. My mom’s dad who had passed away years ago used to spend a lot of time in Brussels for work. There was even a small street named after him somewhere in the city. So we decided to stop over for two nights and wander the city streets and think about my grandpa.

We got lucky again on the hotel choice, staying at La Madeleine hotel, which was a mere 100 meters or so from the Grand Place. We were even luckier in the fact that we arrived just in time for Beer Fest Weekend. The Grand Place was overflowing with people filling the tents from the Beer festival and waiting in line for tokens to enter. We were standing patiently in line for our turn to purchase some tokens so we could partake in some Belgian cerveza and making goofy videos of ourselves, when an older couple pulled my brother aside and handed him a bracelet and told us to have a great time. We were completely dumbfounded as this bracelet meant that we could drink for free for the next hour and a half.

So we elbowed our way through the drunken crowds to the Lindeman’s counter where we tried the raspberry, apricot, and cherry flavors fresh off the tap. Better beer I have never tasted!!! The raspberry is definitely my favorite! We moved on to try several others including Achouffe, Ginette, and many more that I can’t at this moment recall. And we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by friendly Belgians who all wanted to talk to us, asking where we were from, what we thought about Brussels, and what we were doing here. They all mistook my brother for my boyfriend, and as I politely corrected them a few squealed in drunken excitement to tell my brother, “Watch our for your sister, man… the Belgians are coming!!!”

I wound up jumping the barriers of the Beer Fest twice that night since our friends couldn’t bear to part with us. We were quickly adopted by a group of young people who invited us to come along to some adventure or another. We wound up at an Absinthe Bar where our newfound friends introduced us to the art of Absinthe drinking. Apparently it’s technically not legal in Brussels, but they had a bar with over 300 different kinds of the green concoction. I didn’t see the green fairy but it burned my throat so good! Then we danced the night away in a crowded with room full of strangers.

Our first night in Brussels was full of delightfully impromptu surprises which will forever endear that beautiful city to my heart!

THE NETHERLANDS II

We decided that we had to end our trip to Europe on a more tranquil note, and elected to spend our last 5 days in Europe roaming the streets of Amsterdam again, exploring anything we might have missed out on the first time.

My brother was preoccupied with an errand that a friend had asked him to do, and he was given the number of a guy in the city, which he was told to connect with for some good information. So we set off on a treasure hunt to find this stranger’s house in the maze that becomes Amsterdam (especially when under the influence of the “coffee”). We arrived at the address and were buzzed up two incredibly steep flights of stairs where we met Merlin, a wizard of marijuana. This mystical man with kind blue eyes and a turban of graying dreads bound with all the colors of the rainbow happily ushered us into his sanctuary. Originally from the states, he had moved to Amsterdam several decades ago and had created a beautiful haven in an old house seemingly on top of the city. The main room in his house could only be described as some magic man’s lair, full of crystals and sacred rocks and dozens of kittens everywhere since three mama cats had recently given birth.

He sat us down and we talked for hours about life and travel, the world and money. We debated the economy and the nonsense that is paper money, which really has no value at all. We realized once we arrived that our new friend was the 2005 Cannabis Cup winner and was also the creator of some of our favorite strains. Merlin also loves to get folks high. And has he pulled out jars and kilo bags of the greenest buds on the planet, our jaws dropped in awe.

I’m not quite sure how we got back to our hotel that afternoon, but I’m pretty certain we also smoked some of the purest Moroccan hash there is. And on our last day we were fortunate enough to bump into our mystical friend again for one last memorable smoke out before the long journey home.

We managed to make it to a “sex show” before we left, seeing as how it is a bit of a rite of passage when in Amsterdam. We found some fellow travelers to tag along with us and we all giggled together at the sight of the different random couples having sex on stage.

Thinking back on these last two months, I feel like I have grown in so many ways. My biggest accomplishment being the ability to sit back, relax and go with the flow. Being open to new people and experiences has expanded my mind more than I ever could have thought possible, and I am still trying to process it all. But I have ultimately learned that if you let go of fear and open your heart to the flow of the universe, the current will always bring you to the most interesting parts of the river.

And like it says on the inside of my backpack:

NEVER STOP EXPLORING