But, let's back up to where I left off last time.
After trekking up a fantastic mountain, everyone else on tour (basically) proceeded to get food poisoning or some sort of stomach bug. I think stomach bug, as some people got it the next day and others the day after that. "Everyone" includes our driver, Ricky. Crap. So, a whole bunch of people puked their guts out all night and poor Ricky looked like he was ready to knock on death's door the following morning as we loaded the coach. Obviously we did not let him do any of the work. We made him use the toilet one last time and sit and wait in the driver's seat until we were ready to leave. We made it safely to our next destination! Hurray!
So, we went to the Rhine Valley and visited a small town called St. Goar. Here we went to a beerstein producer and wine tasting. Weird, I know, but the Rhine Valley region is known for their wines. They produce sweet white wines, desert wines, and ice wines. Yumm. I say "yum" because I sat next to my BFF Jack. Remember him from the beer hall? He only drinks liquor, preferably starting with the letter "J"...? Yeah. I drank all of my wine samples, all of his wine samples, and most of another guy's wine samples because he only likes red wine. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good.
Next stop: Amsterdam. I am not impressed with Amsterdam. Perhaps it has to do with it being the last city, but I was really excited for Amsterdam before and now that I have been here for 3 days, I am just not impressed. At all. I went to:
- The Anne Frank House: very cool to get a real visual.
- VanGogh Museum: I heart him, so that was great.
- Our Lord of the Attic: interesting history.
- Canal Cruise: Fun! I love river and canal cruises. My new favorite thing. People would come to GR more if we had those things.
- Botanical Gardens: Pretty, but small.
- The Diamond Museum: Not what I was expecting. They had primarily replicas. Did you know that there is a hereditary Monarchy in Netherlands? Me either. I saw replicas of their crowns and video footage of the coronation. Weird that in my research that never came up...
- Zoo: Actually, the zoo was pretty epic. I would go there again. It was cool enough that the animals were up and playing and they had tons of baby animals. And penguins. The penguins were happy to see me!
- Tulip Museum: I had to because I'm in Netherlands....but what the hell was that?
- Some old church that I can't remember the name of, but it is the Dutch version of Westminster Abbey, except smaller and with more light and only one tomb and no poet's or artist's corner. But they let you take pictures!
- Final night of partying with the tour crew. We tore it up, don't worry.
I had fun here, don't get me wrong, but I feel no need to return. Also, it keeps raining. It rains more here in Amsterdam than it did in London. And more than it did when I visited Seattle.
I think that I just don't enjoy the atmosphere of Amsterdam. Or maybe I am just mopey because I miss my friends from tour and bantering with Ricky and correcting Sam's pronunciation of everything. Watching everyone leave was legitimately one of the most emotionally trying things that I have ever done. One of the guys was trying to cheer me up by saying that I should be used to it: it is just like high school graduation. Except for me it is not just like high school graduation. It is more like that for the 42 Australians on tour, because they all live in Australia and many of them live in the same city as others. I may actually never see any of my tour friends ever again and it stings because they have worked their way into my heart. Hmm. Enough of that.
Hopefully escaping for a fresh city tomorrow will perk me up a bit. If not, at least Belgium is know for their chocolate!
No comments:
Post a Comment