Andy Cunningham, one of Rachel’s friends from Oxford, put it best when he said, “So this is essentially your victory lap through Europe?”

It certainly was. By comparison to most other places I’ve visited, London, Amsterdam, and Paris were very easy to travel through. It was the perfect way to wrap up my 7+ weeks in Europe, with something fun and comfortable. I also got to take my time (relatively speaking), with three nights in Amsterdam and a whopping five nights in Paris. Luxury!

My first night in Amsterdam was nice and simple. I went out for dinner and tried some of the things that the Dutch do best: pea soup and fish. The pea soup was particularly good, though it did contain sausage (I pretended it was chicken sausage and opted not to think about it further). Later that evening I polished up my previous blog post, and pushed out yet another round of post-and-pictures.

Friday was my day to do Amsterdam on my own, and I had a couple of sights and to-do items in mind. After sleeping in late, I grabbed lunch and headed to the Anne Frank House. I’ve never read The Diaries of Anne Frank, but the museum does a very good job of giving you the whole picture and an appreciation for how important that house (their hiding place for two years) really is. The house really has a gravity to it, a soul tug. It pulls your heart strings. I guess that’s what they were going for, and, well, they definitely do a good job of it. I was moved.

Unfortunately, after my good (though sobering) time at the Anne Frank House, my day took a turn toward random bad luck. On the way to drop off my clothes at the wasserette (laundromat), my sunglasses broke; after all that angst over losing them in Madrid, they were now garbage =(. Later that day, I took a walk back to the main Amsterdam train station to book my final Eurail pass reservations through to Paris. After taking a number and waiting for about 45 minutes, I realized I’d left the pass back at the hotel – agh! I took another number from the queue, this one very much higher, and headed back to the hotel via the Red Light district; I figured it’d take so long for my number to come up that I could afford a little sightseeing detour.

The district itself was a real borderline thrill. I did see a handful of women sitting in windows – mostly just staring out at the passers-by and trying to push their boobs up even further – and a ton of sex shops. But otherwise it was pretty tame, lots of cafés and American tourists sitting around sipping coffee. Granted, this was all happening in broad daylight; had I come back later that night I might have seen something else. But to be honest I wasn’t really interested; I’d seen what I needed to see.

When I did finally get back to the train station – Eurail pass in hand – I was surprised to find that my number had passed ages ago! The queue must have started moving twice as fast after I left… grumble. I took a third number, and sat around for yet another 30 minutes. Finally, after all this waiting, I got to a ticket desk. And I found out that all the train reservations to Paris had been sold out for weeks. Crap. My one option, aside from spending over 100 Euros on a 1st class ticket, was to take a series of local trains. I’d leave at 9:30am, change trains in Antwerp, Lille, and Amiens, and finally get to Paris by 7:30pm. Woo. My original plan had been to spend the afternoon sightseeing in Belgium that day, but with this new schedule I’d have a whopping 65 minutes in Antwerp station. So much for that.

That night I made it up to myself by trying the other Dutch specialty for dinner: Indonesian food. Though they don’t still own it, the Dutch have held on to a love for peanut sauce and happily serve it up on everything from traditional Indonesian fare to French fries. That part of the day, at least, went quite well – dinner was delicious =).

Saturday was my day to see Amsterdam with friends – a rare (but now increasingly common) treat! I met up with Lennard, a fellow Google intern who lives in The Netherlands, and had the pleasure of getting shown around town by a local. Our first stop was the Rijksmuseum, followed by the giant “I Amsterdam” letters and a lunch featuring French fries dipped in mayonnaise or peanut sauce. That afternoon, as we were taking a breather in the Vondelpark, I got a call from yet another friend: Matt Bush, who I know through both the gay and CS communities at Stanford. Lennard and I grabbed a drink and then met up with Matt at Dam Square. At that point, Lennard told us he had a surprise: he was going to take us to “wine and fokking”. Neither of us had any idea what this meant. Sounded dirty. But of course we had to find out what on earth this was. After a couple minutes of wandering, we ended up at a home-made liqueur shop by the name of Wynand Fockink (“vine-ond fah-kink”). They serve up liqueur samples in elegant little glasses, which are set on the bar and then filled to the brim – literally overflowing at times. The tradition is to then bend over and sip the top off of your glass, until its low enough to pick up without spilling. The three of us shared three rounds, and had a great time enjoying the drinks, company, and location. The place has some definite history and character (the sipping being a key part of it); they’ve been making and serving liqueurs out of that same shop since the 17th century.

The three of us then headed out for dinner, but Matt split off shortly after we sat down – he had to go meet with his hosts in Amsterdam. Lennard and I had yet another peanut sauce-heavy meal – no complaints here – and then said goodbye. I went home and folded laundry, and tried to get some sleep in anticipation of my long upcoming day of local trains.

The journey from Amsterdam to Paris turned out to be even more complicated than expected. My 9:30am train out of Amsterdam was abruptly canceled with 10 minutes notice. A bit frazzled, I asked the conductor on the platform what my other options were for getting to Antwerp (my first stop) as soon as possible. He told me that if I got on “this local train” (pointing to the next platform) and changed at Roosendaal, I could get to Antwerp in about the same time. Great – I hopped on that train and went.

But something wasn’t right; when they announced the train stops, Roosendaal wasn’t one of them. I asked a conductor, and sure enough, that train was not headed to Roosendaal… wonderful. I explained my situation, and we came to the conclusion that my best option was to get off at Rotterdam and wait for the 10:30am train from Amsterdam to Antwerp – the one I could have caught if I’d just stayed in Amsterdam and waited for the subsequent train. The only problem is that I’d get to Antwerp with 5 minutes to make my connection, instead of 65. I swear, someone up there really didn’t want me to spend any time in Belgium on this trip. My time there was ultimately diminished from an afternoon to an hour to five minutes.

There was, however, a silver lining to this grand mess of local trains. On the ride from Rotterdam to Antwerp I sat across the aisle from a cute little five-year-old and his mom. The kid was fascinated with my iPod – he was glued to the screen, watching me play Solitaire of all things. At first it was annoying – I was already pretty annoyed by the train situation – but he started to grow on me. I asked him if he wanted to play a game; oh absolutely, his mother said. We played a two-player round of Tap Tap Revolution (it’s like DDR with your fingers), and he had a great time – even though he never quite figured out how to play. At that point the two of us were hooked on each other, and we spent the rest of the train ride playing various games (he got pretty good at Paper Toss) and listening to music together using my two-way headphone splitter. He’s a huge fan of Michael Jackson and, according to his mother, frequently sings and dances to MJ songs at school. Quite the entertainer.

At one point we were listening to “7 Things” by Miley Cyrus (his mother picked it out, not me, I swear), and since I know all the lyrics by heart, I was mouthing them out as it played. He stared at me slack-jawed. I think he actually believed I was singing, for a moment there – he took out his headphones, realized that the sound wasn’t coming from me, and then put them back in. It was adorable/hilarious.

The rest of the trip to Paris was relatively uneventful. I did make my five minute connection in Antwerp, and was on my way out of Belgium as quickly as I’d entered it. By dinner time I’d gotten to Paris, checked in, and had a bit of a wander around the area near my hotel.

Paris is a tremendous city, in more ways than one. It’s beautiful, physically large, and has a plethora of things you can see and do. I made a list of just the top few (14 or so) that I wanted to see, and even with four full days at my disposal, struggled to fit it all in. That first morning I took the metro out to the Eiffel Tower, had a nice walk through the Champs de Mars, and took a break to eat a gluten-free Madeleine in the shade. I then crossed over to the Trocadero on the right bank, had lunch at a café, and walked to the Arc de Triomphe. I’d passed on the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower, mainly because I didn’t want to wait over an hour in line, but did opt for the trip up the Arc de Triomphe. I’m biased, certainly, but I think it was the right choice; the Eiffel Tower is such a key part of the Paris skyline, and if you’re in the tower you can’t see it! From the Arc de Triomphe I had a great view of everything from Sacre Coeur to the financial district, the Eiffel Tower and Champs Élysées.

I had hoped to then go see the Louvre, but after walking about 2/3 of the way down Champs Élysées, I realized this wasn’t realistic – there weren’t enough hours left before it closed, and I needed to sit down and rest. The city is quite spread out, and the walk down Champs Élysées is no short stroll. I opted to go visit the Centre Pompidou instead. Though the post-1960 art wasn’t my favorite, I really enjoyed the 1900-1960 collection that featured a number of Picasso’s works and some truly bizarre and fun Dada art. The building was an interesting piece of work itself – it’s nothing like every other building in Paris, a solid hunk of brightly colored metal pipes, steel, air ducts, and glass tubes all exposed on the outside.

That evening, after a charming dinner along the nearby Place de Igor Stravinsky (whose fountain is littered with oddities like a giant pair of wax lips spurting water), I took the metro back toward the Seine and got on an evening river cruise, just as the sun was setting. It was perfect timing – the night faded to total darkness during the hour-long ride, and I got to see the highlights of Paris all lit-up in their full splendor. It was a great way to cap off a full, successful day of sightseeing.

The next morning I was up bright and early for a bike tour of Versailles. I met up with a handful of other tourists at the Fat Tire Bike Tours shop, got bikes, and then took the train out to Versailles. We then made a stop at a local open-air food market to buy supplies for a picnic lunch, and then headed out toward the Grand Canal.

Unfortunately, when we first showed up at the station in Versailles, it was raining miserably. I’d brought a rain jacket and was managing just fine, but some of the others were sopping wet in their shorts and t-shirts. Luckily, by the time we biked out to the canal, the rain had stopped. And since most other visitors seemed to be deterred by the bad weather, we ended up having the entire grounds to ourselves! We set up camp on the west end of the canal – a giant cross-shaped lake with the chateau at the east end – and ate our picnic lunches. I’d brought along a loaf of gluten-free bread, and enjoyed it with some roast beef and mayo I’d bought at the market. Delicious view, delicious food!

After lunch, we biked up to the chateau itself and did the standard walk-through of the endless ornate rooms. Room after room after room, each one littered with the likenesses of French nobles. Although this was a “low-traffic” day at the chateau, on account of the rain, the place was still jam-packed with tourists and groups slogging up the works. I was happy to get out of there.

The chateau gardens, on the other hand, were far more enjoyable. They pipe classical music up throughout the grounds, with dancing fountains to match; combined with the well-kept flowers and endless lines of hedges, it made for a very stereotypical and wonderfully French afternoon.

The next day provided yet another opportunity for me to go hog-wild sightseeing in Paris, running myself ragged (though enjoying it) in the process. I started the morning at Notre Dame, yet another “must-see”, and then visited the nearby Sainte Chapelle. While waiting in line to get in, I met three women from Georgia: two students from a small state school, and their Art Appreciation professor. We all had a good time chatting, and I ended up joining their Art Appreciation tour of both Sainte Chapelle and the nearby Conciergerie. Wonderful! I got to learn so much more about Sainte Chapelle than I ever would have on my own. The chapel is essentially a large stained-glass bible, with hundreds of little windows depicting everything from Moses (horns included) to Jesus and, on the back wall, the apocalypse. They’d brought a pair of binoculars with them, which I got to use as well. You would not believe the level of detail on these windows! Each one is a small masterpiece, with intricate facial expressions and other minutia all tucked into these tiny vignettes.

After the Conciergerie (a rather boring museum showing where prisoners were kept during the French Revolution, before their beheading), the class and I parted ways and I grabbed a quick lunch. Next on my list was the Louvre, which I finally had time to see. I did the usual tourist thing: see the Mona Lisa, see the Venus de Milo, walk through a small handful of other galleries, and leave. The place is just too big to do with any kind of thoroughness. It’s almost more like a very fancy art warehouse than a museum. Maybe it was the massive crowds, maybe it was the steadily-increasing weariness of museums, but either way I’d had enough after about two hours. I can cross that one off the list.

That evening I took the metro out to Sacre Coeur, a charming basilica that crowns the Montmartre district, a hill out on the right bank. After enjoying the view for a few minutes, I realized that I was very close to one of the gluten-free restaurants I’d researched in advance – in fact, this one claimed to be 100% gluten-free! I had to check it out. Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in Des Si et Des Mets, happily munching on the complementary gluten-free bread. The meal was fantastic, easily the best I had in Paris. It was also the only meal I ate in a bona fide restaurant, with the price tag to match, as opposed to a café. But I enjoyed every bite. I ended up getting a tomato soup, duck with strawberries and potatoes, and a strawberry-banana tart. Add in the suggested wine pairing for the duck, and it was a perfect meal.

That day just so happened to be July 13 – the day before Bastille Day or, as the French call it, Quatorze Juillet (July 14, no surprise). For whatever reason, the French firefighters have a tradition of throwing giant, free parties at firehouses around France on the evening before Quatorze Juillet – perfect timing! I’d already scoped out one particular Bals des Pompiers (Fireman’s Ball), and after dinner I went looking for the party. The line by the Les Halles firehouse was spilling out and around the corner, but moved quickly enough. While I was waiting, I struck up a chat with the two women right behind me: Desiré and Irene. Desiré is Italian, but has been living in Paris since May while doing an internship at UNESCO. Irene is a professor at a local university, and knew Desiré through a UNESCO connection. The three of us hit it off, and ended up spending the rest of the evening together. I thoroughly enjoyed the booze, rowdiness, and music inside the party (they played everything from old French classics to Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman”). I even started to see one of the firemen do a strip-tease, but he stopped too soon… perhaps if we’d stayed later things would have gotten crazier, but by about 12:30 we were all getting weary and left. Desiré and Irene hadn’t eaten a proper dinner, so we went to a nearby diner (called “Hippopotamus,” of all things) and got food. Yet another great end to a jam-packed day.

At long last, Quatorze Juillet had arrived. I’d purposefully planned my time in Paris so that I’d be in town for Bastille Day, and it also happened to be my last full day in Europe.

My treat to myself was to not do as much sightseeing that day, and instead focus on just being in Paris. I got a late start, sleeping in quite late, but ultimately found my way out to the Seine for lunch at a café. I did a little souvenir shopping, and then spent a good amount of time sitting in the Tuileries gardens in front of the Louvre. Later in the afternoon I took a walk over to the Musee d’Orsay, a smaller and much more manageable museum than the Louvre, which I frankly enjoyed much more. What a great surprise to see some equally famous works of art, including Whistler’s Mother, some of Renoir’s most famous works, and Van Gogh’s self-portrait! The building itself is also quite interesting (maybe you’ve noticed at this point: I’m frankly more interested in the buildings and the architecture than the art inside them) – it used to be the Paris train station, and it has a particularly beautiful decorative barrel roof.

Once I’d made my round through the museum, I came back to the Tuileries and ate dinner at a café in the park. At that point the sun was starting to set, so I made my way over toward the Place de la Concorde and staked out a viewing spot for the upcoming fireworks show.

About a half hour later, surrounded by French families with picnic dinners, I heard an overwhelming raucous of English-speaking voices. A group of some kind had just sat down behind me, and after a few minutes I decided I’d go join them. They had just arrived in Paris that day; a Top Deck bus tour group, based out of London, most of whom were Australian (par for course, as far as these kinds of tours go). We all got friendly, and watched the fireworks show together. It was a great way to say goodbye to Europe – going out with a “bang”, so to speak. Once the show was over, I made the long walk back to the hotel (forget the metro – I’d been warned against it given the crowds) and slept.

Yesterday was a long day of travel – all the way back to New York! The trip is now very much in its final throes. I really can’t believe I’ve come this far. I’m a bit sad that it’s coming to a close, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing friends and family. There’s no place like home, and your own home country.

Some closing comments on Amsterdam and Paris:

• Like the Swiss, the Dutch make a point of knowing their neighbors’ languages. They all speak Dutch and English fluently, and are also very competent in both French and German.
• The buildings in Amsterdam are cramped. The staircase in my hotel was probably about a 60-degree incline, with the ceiling so low at points that I had to do a bit of a limbo when going down!
• The French were not the… warmest people I met during my travels. They’re very proud when it comes to speaking French – most of them speak English, but they prefer not to use it. One general rule that served me very well was to always start conversations with locals in French. They want to see that you’re trying, even if all you can say is “Bonjour” (which is most of what I knew how to say… that and some numbers). With about 70% of the French I encountered, this was enough to at least get a polite response – if you then start speaking in English, they’ll answer you back. About 10% were genuinely happy to speak to me in English. The other 20% really didn’t want to talk to me, but we made it work regardless… it was one of the more difficult language barriers, at times, surprisingly enough.
• Along those same lines: France was the one country I visited where public announcements and signs were completely devoid of English. Speak French or get lost – literally. Good thing I know some Spanish, which often helped me guess correctly at the meaning of various words.
• Speaking of signs, the French signage – particularly in the metro – is horrible. They’ll have signs pointing you to just one direction of a metro line and not the other, or a single sign that indicates every metro line but takes you on the most roundabout possible path to get there. I definitely got lost in the metro a good handful of times.

Next time in California!!
-Izaak