European Vacation - Part 1

Okay, so I'm a really bad person. I know that it has been a while since I have posted but it has been crazy around here. I'll do my best to remember everything I can about my vacation and the visit with my father and sister. Let's start with vacation and we'll see how far I get. I'm sure that this is going to take a few posts but whatever. I do have pictures up on my website for those of you who know the address. I realize after publishing it that I have to go back and edit some stuff. When I get some time....right?????

Day 1 - We left our house at like 4:30 am to get the ferry over to France. We got down there okay and oh yeah we took the Blazer and not the car, it worked out better in the end. We were more comfortable and had more room to buy stuff and put it somewhere. Anyways, we get on the ferry it was an hour and half ride, not to bad. The swaying wasn't all that bad. I'm fine as long as I'm sitting down most of the way. Tim drove after we got off the ferry. We were now on the right side of the road, which felt kinda weird. We really didn't notice how weird it was until we had to make a left hand turn, I nearly killed us in Amsterdam. Now the road in England are small and narrow but nothing compared to what they were in Amsterdam. I understand now why everyone rides a bike there. Bikes had their own lane, it was kinda funny. They would ring their little bell and you had better of moved quickly or you were getting hit. On the bikes they even had little baby seats for the kids. They had the normal ones that I'm sure you have all seen in the states but they had little tiny ones too, they were so cute. Anyways, it was REALLY hot and our room had no AC. (**Note to self and others: key thing to look for when booking a room in Europe in the middle of summer is AC!!!) The room was very hot and well not much to it, but that was fine with us cause we weren't there half the time anyways. Tim parked the truck which costed us about 34 euros in the end (about $65) for one night. Sad I know, gas was worse. I never want to hear how much you guys are paying for a tank of gas. I paid for the most expensive 13.9 gallons of gas in my left in Belgium. It was $106...yes that is right, $106!! Anyways, we drop our stuff off and head out to see if what everyone says about Amsterdam is really true and well....it is! We went the the market first and did a little shopping. The t-shirts were great. Tim ended up getting on with 2 dogs on the front that says, "So many bitches, so little time" It was funny, it is a very "him" shirt. They had another one with a Nike swoosh on it that was a sperm that said, "Just did it" that one was a good one as well. So we got some stuff around there and we got high by just walking around the market. Neither Tim or I smoke but it is legal to smoke there. They have cafes that will sell it to you. They are not allowed to sell you more than 5 grams at a time and it isn't illegal unless you have more than 30 grams on you. Thought that was interesting. In the market there will little stands selling it as well. They were also selling packages of the bags for distribution.
So we left the market and headed towards Ann Frank's house. We did the tour of the tiny house. Can't image living in tight quarters like that for 4 years. The bookcase that you go through looks like the ones in all the pictures. You know how sometimes somethings look different in person than in the picture. The bookcase looked like I was looking at it in a book, they look the same. The stairway up to the apartment was very steep and narrow. It was a very simple tour. What I mean by that is that the writings on the wall were not huge paragraphs in tiny print. They were written in large print and very simple thoughts of Ann Frank's diary. The only place where we were not allowed to go was up in the attic or loft area with the sky light. Did you know that there are 2 different versions of Ann Frank's diary. After filling up her first diary she decided to go back and rewrite the old one neater. She did some editing and their was over 100 pages of her diary found on loose paper when they were found. The lady that took care of them (I can't remember her name) said that she waited until she knew that both girls were dead before returning the pages to Ann's father. He went through them and took out all the entries that had anything to do with personal family matters and her sexual thoughts. Didn't know that. Anyways, I bought the original version of her diary, and bought another one for my MIL for her birthday. She is big into books and thought since you can only get this type of book here, I would get it for her. Not sure if she has received it yet but she'll call when she does. After this we went down by the canal and took a canal trip. Amsterdam has a lot of canals running through it and the canal trip let us see most of the city without having to walk it. It was pretty, lots of boats. After the canal trip we went into the sex museum. This was interesting. Did you know that they use to use elephant tusks for the first didos. No joke, I saw them and they were craved in the shape of penises. And porn has been around a whole lot longer than I ever thought. We saw many pictures dating back to the early 1900s of naked women doing very sexual things. I mean they were not as bad as they are today but for the 1900s, I'm sure they were not the norm. There were mostly pictures in there and lots of little figures doing not so nice things to one another. I remember a lot of Chinese stuff or Chinese looking figures. But anyways, an experience none the less. After this we were hungry and decided to find some place to eat. Every place we went to was PACKED, it was Thursday night. We decided to head back to our hotel to find a place around there. We walked right through the Red Light District. There were girls already in the window half naked asking us to come in and watch. We smiled and continued to walk, although I was slight compelled to back and see but we didn't, I'm pretty sure Tim wouldn't have argued with me about that one. But all that you hear about the amount of sex in Amsterdam is very true, it is EVERYWHERE!! We found a restaurant right around the corner from our hotel. All the chairs on the outside face the street so that you can people watch while you eat. People are amazing, you should just sit and watch what they are where, who they are walking with, and what they are talking about. You'll be amazed at what you hear and see. We both had steak, it was our first steak out in a restaurant in 2 1/2 years, it was great!! I had a bottle and half of wine and Tim had 3-4 pints of beer. After dinner it was late, so we went back to the hotel room to sweat our asses off and attempt to sleep. Our AC was a 2 inch crack of the window and a small fan. Great huh?

Day 2 - We got up late and took cold showers to get cool since Tim was sleeping on wet sheets he sweated so bad at night. Now I know this next part maybe gross but I just feel that I have to tell you. When we first got to England the toilets are slightly different from those in the states. They do not hold as much water as they do at home. So it is not uncommon to see a toilet brush next to the toilet so when all of your....well poop does go down with the water you can brush it off the toilet so you don't have brown spots on the bowl. Well in Holland (or at least in Amsterdam) the hole where the water goes down is at the front of the toilet and at the back of the bowl is well a shelf. So when you poop you poop on the shelf, it never touches water until you flush the toilet. We just thought it was weird and well gross at the same time that you have to shit on a shelf. Okay, hope that wasn't to bad but now you know what to expect if you ever go to Amsterdam. So we got up, showed and checked out. We put our stuff in truck and went out again. We got some breakfast as this bagel place and walked around the market once more. We got our normal stuff that we have to get at each country (magnet, shot glass, and what ever else interested us). We didn't want to stay to long because we had to drive to Germany for graduation. We left around noon for Germany. I drove because I don't know how to work the GPS that we had. It always made me nervous when Tim was playing with the GPS and attempting to drive at the same time. Anyways, we drive and finally hit Germany. I knew we were in Germany when everyone started passing me on the AudioBaud. They are CRAZY over there driving, but I know how fast my truck goes. My truck is governed at 97 mph, after that the car stops sending gas to the engine until it gets below that. The sad part was that when I was doing 97 I was still getting passed at 110, 120, and I'm sure I saw one at 130, maybe. It was the same 3 makes of car all the time. They were the Audi, VW, and Mercedes. Usually the Audi lead but I never realized how fast the VW would go, especially the little Golfs. Either way, they were some fast cars. We got to Germany and drop our stuff off and head to the base to see where graduation is going to take place. We where hungry but wanted to find the place first then go and eat. Heidelberg is an Army post so they looked at us kinda funny with our Air Force ID cards. We were logged into the computer and headed to the pavilion. We found a TGI Fridays that looked runned down and close, but upon closer inspection it was very much open. We haven't eaten at a restaurant like that since we have been overseas. IHOP, Denny's, Wafflehouse, Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday and restaurant of that nature are nonexistent in England. So we ate a good meal there and went into Heidelberg to do some exploring. We drove around for a while but we couldn't see much due to the fact that it was dark out and we were driving around a mountain, which made me nervous in the big truck, also keep in mind that the road are narrow as well. I know that I was tired because I drove most of the way that day so we decided to call it a day and headed back to our AC hotel room and went to bed.

Day 3 - We got up somewhat early that day and ate breakfast at this little diner down the street from our hotel. The hotel where we stayed wanted 30 euros per day for breakfast, we said no and went out on our owe, it ended up cheaper that way. After breakfast we headed towards town to go and see the Heidelberg castle. They have this tram that takes you up to the different level of the castle. The first stop is the castle. The view up there are beautiful. Germany was by far my favor country. The view around the castle are great and the grounds were really pretty as well. The city sits right on the river and there are several bridges that cross it. One famous bridge is the Old Bridge. It is no longer allowing cars to cross it is more of a foot bridge now. When we were up there there were several professional photographers taking wedding pictures of people. It was quite nice. I felt kinda bad for them, it was REALLY hot that day. The next stop on the tram is more of a middle level. There wasn't much to see there and you had to get off the modern tram to get on the old fashion tram to get to the top of the mountain. We were all crammed in little old fashion car on our way to the top. We took a few pictures and walked around some. Again there wasn't much up there except the great view of the city. We headed back down to the bottom of the mountain to do some shopping. We bought a fair amount of stuff. They had this Gummy Bear shop there that sells the Gummy Bears in different shapes. It was funny some of the shapes. They had some in the shape of a boobs, penises, naked lady, muscle men, and a few others that I can't think of right now. We walked around a bit longer and had really bratwurst and sore crout at a German pub. It was really good. We walked around some more taking pictures of different things and then headed back to the hotel. This was also the night that Germany was playing Portugal for 3rd place in the World Cup. We watched the game in the bar of the hotel. We got drunk down there, but I'm sure that if we had gone down town that we wouldn't have gotten up for graduation the next day. It was a good night none the less. I'm sure that you know that Germany won. I was told that down town was crazier then than it was New Year's that year.

Okay, I'll finish the rest later, I'm not as fast at typing as I once was in college. Writing all those damn papers, plus I need to catch up on everyone else's blogs while I feel motivated to sit at the computer.