Amsterdam

Even though we had a day and a half of London in between Paris and Amsterdam, I'm going to skip over all that for now and come back to it later.

We had to get up bright and early last Wednesday morning to get to Heathrow to catch our flight for our day trip to Amsterdam. When we got to the airport, we tried to check in at the kiosk but couldn't because of my emergency passport. So we had to go to the counter and have someone check us in. I handed her my passport and she looked it over pretty good, like everyone else. She was getting ready to hand it back to me and then said she needed to ask one of her colleagues about something. She came back and proceeded to tell me that because I didn't have three months remaining on my passport that she didn't think that The Netherlands would let me in the country. Great. Just what we wanted to hear! Luckily, they called Schiphol, the airport in Amsterdam, and they decided that because I was only going to be there for the day and that they could check me in for my return flight, they were going to all me in the country. We made sure that they put some kind of note on the system with who they talked to because we didn't want to get over there and have them say I couldn't leave the airport or something.

Once we landed, I was a little afraid to hand my passport to the customs desk, but she barely looked at it and stamped me through. At that point we breathed a sigh of relief because we knew that once I got in the country, there would be no problem leaving, right....?

For some reason, I didn't feel very good that day. My stomach was feeling ishy when we were at Heathrow but I thought once I ate something it would get better. It seemed to ease of a little bit, but once we started walking in Amsterdam the pain came back. It wasn't like a sick pain, it just hurt and it would come in waves. I would have to stop and breath through it and then continue walking. We came up with all sorts of conclusions as to what was causing the pain; exhaustion from going non-stop, stress from the passport ordeal in Paris, nerves because Mom was leaving in just a couple more days, hunger just because we hadn't eaten hardly anything on the trip. Then we decided it was most likely all of that balled into one. My body was finally rebelling and saying that it'd had enough.

Oddly enough, my stomach seemed to hurt less when I wasn't walking. So, we found a Birkenstock store and decided to go shopping. Mom and I got two pair each and still paid quite a bit less that it would have cost at home for one pair. We decided to wear them our of the store because we were hot, since it was probably 60-65 in Amsterdam that day. Probably not the smartest choice on our parts, but I'll go into more detail about that later.

After we were done at the Birkenstock store, we made our way to The Anne Frank House. It's definitely a place I'd recommend for anyone to go to if you ever get the chance. You actually get to go behind the bookcase and into the living area and the room where Anne and Margot slept. It's still all decorated with the pictures of movie stars that Anne put on the walls while they were in hiding. I would have loved to have seen it again, but of course that didn't happen. When we got there the lines to get in were down the street and around the corner. It must have been national field trip day or something because there were probably 5 school groups in line. We could have pre-purchased the tickets, but we had to pick a time and weren't sure exactly when we were going to get there. Needless to say, we didn't wait in line. I felt bad because I knew Mom really wanted to go, but I also know that it wouldn't have been quite as enjoyable with so many kids there. So, we took pictures outside instead:

After that we decided it was time to get some lunch. My stomach was still hurting really bad, but I figured eating a little more wasn't going to hurt anything. We trekked all the way to the other side of town and found the Hard Rock Cafe. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be branching out, but all I wanted was some good American food at this point. All I managed to eat was a side salad and a couple bites of Mom's really good mac and cheese. My stomach is seriously the size of a pea now, I can't eat much before I'm full. As we were waiting for our food, we looked out the window and saw these two grown guys wearing all out bunny suits. If that wasn't funny enough, they took the bunny heads off, put helmets on and rode away on a motorcycle together. So random!




Our waiters name was Zoltan, he was awesome!



After eating some lunch, I was starting to feel better so we headed to the Heineken Experience. I'd also been here before too, but some things had changed. Here are some pictures from our tour:












So that's about all we did in Amsterdam. Since I didn't feel very well and Mom had lost her camera in Paris, I didn't take too many pictures. But, here are some of the city I took throughout the day:







We made it back to the airport (after wasting 15 euro on train tickets. They didn't check once!) and Mom got through security just fine. Me on the other hand, had a little more difficulty. As I said earlier, I was sure since I got into the country, it wouldn't be an issue to leave the country. I'm not sure if I got a new employee or she just took her job really seriously but she looked my passport over for like 5 minutes. She had a magnifying glass out and everything. Given, it does look different, but not THAT different. It was clearly me in the picture and it says right inside that it's an emergency passport that was issued at a US Embassy abroad. The laminate that they used was starting to peel up on the corner, but it wasn't that noticeable. After using her magnifying glass and her little fraud light, she then decided that she needed to call her supervisor over to give me the ok to pass. He came and barely looked at it and luckily said it was fine. By this point our feet were hurting really bad from all the walking we'd been doing, not to mention the fact that all day we'd been wearing brand new Birkenstock's and uneven cobblestone streets. Our feet were so swollen that when we changed back into our shoes (because we had a feeling it would be raining when we got back to London... we were right) we couldn't even tie them. It felt like they were on fire, but we kept moving every few minutes because the longer we were off of them the worse it felt. Once we landed in London and finally got back through customs here, we knew we were in the home stretch. I'm not entirely sure how we made it back because we were both exhausted. We must have pulled adrenalin from the tips of our swollen toes or something.

Ok, off to bed now. Last day of school for this week tomorrow!

Paris - part deux

Where did I leave off? Oh right, it's now Sunday morning. We decided we might as well make the most of the time we had in Paris since we were stuck there and didn't really get to do much on Saturday except look for my passport.

First we headed to Notre Dame. Since it was Sunday morning, they were holding mass inside. I think it's weird that all the visitors can walk around and look at stuff while they are holding a church ceremony in the middle of it all. Nevertheless, Notre Dame is beautiful:

While we were at Notre Dame, Mom realized that she didn't have any of her daily medication with her, mainly her blood pressure medication. Now I know most of you reading this live in small towns without any underground transportation, but let me tell you, there are a TON of stairs. She made sure to take them slow so she didn't get her heart working too much. But, between that and her back from the oh so comfortable bed at the hotel, it wasn't much fun for her to walk around that day. The following is a real conversation that took place between Mom and I after she almost fell down at Notre Dame due to the uneven floors:

Mom: Making funny/strange noises.

Katie: Are you ok? Is it your heart or your back?

Mom: My Back.

Katie: Good!

Now obviously it wasn't a good thing that she was having shooting pains going through her back, but I would much rather it have been that than her heart. We were pretty slow moving the rest of the day, but we trekked on. Next stop was the Eiffel Tower. I honestly cannot believe the lines of people waiting to get tickets to go up inside. I've been up to the top and while it's a great view, you can get better views from other places in town and have pictures that show the Tower in the skyline. We made our way through the people (and beggars) and took some pictures of us in front of it. We practically had to lay on the ground to get the whole thing in the pictures, that Tower is TALL!




The Arc de Triomphe was next on the agenda for the day. Once we finally figured out how to get out there (UNDER the street, duh! :) we somehow stumbled on some kind of ceremony. There was a band and a group of people surrounding the eternal flame. Still not sure what it was all about, but something to do with the military I think.




One of Edda's requests for me while I was in Paris was to eat an eclair. I figured there was no better place to fulfill this request than on the Champs Elysees. I'm not a big chocolate fan, but it was pretty good!




I'd been given the address and the metro stop for the US Embassy, but we wanted to make sure we knew exactly where it was for Monday morning. I'd never been so happy to see the stars and stripes of our flag!




Now that we knew where the Embassy was, we were off to The Louvre. We mainly were in search of The Mona Lisa, but there is so much to see in there. We didn't even make a dent. We stopped off for pictures with the Venus de Milo then headed for Mona's room. When I was here before there was security all over the place (Debbie can vouch for this because we had a lookout person and a picture taker) yelling at anyone who tried to take a picture. This time there was nobody. So we got right up there to the front of the line and had our pictures with Mona too. Why not?





Sorry these pictures are out of order. I'd fix them, but it takes forever and I'm tired. :)

After we were done inside, we headed out to the pyramids in front to take pictures. We sat down by the water to rest for a couple minutes and make a quick phone call to the tour company in London for the Liverpool tour we were going to be missing Monday. Mom was taking pictures on her camera while I was trying to make my phone work (I will never again complain about having to dial 541!). I finally got it to ring and handed her the phone. I thought she put her camera back in her bag, but apparently she set it down on the bench and we walked off without it. By the time she realized it, we were eating dinner at the Hard Rock and knew there was no getting it back at that point.

The last stop of the day was back at the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up. We made it a fast trip because it's not in a very nice area. I'm really impressed with the quality of the pictures from my camera!




Monday morning -

This was the day we'd been waiting for. We set the alarm for 7 even though we weren't that far away and it didn't open until 9... I wanted to make sure I was first in line. And I was. Our Embassy is surrounded by security. I'm sure it's like that in every country, but we found it amusing that the guards outside spoke very little English. Once we finally were directed to the correct entrance, the first checkpoint was to get the forms and have a quick bag check. From there, we had to go through another security checkpoint with metal detectors and everything and they took away all of our electronics. Basically all we were allowed to take inside were our wallets. Now we were finally inside and the nice guy sent me to take my new pictures (this really is a blessing in disguise, my passport photo was AWFUL) and gave me the first ticket of the day. It was only about 840am at this point so we went and sat right in front of the windows that were for emergency passports. Finally at 9am they called my number. I went up to the window and had to explain my whole story to the guy and he explained that they would issue me an 'emergency' passport that would only be good for 90 days. Finally, $100 and a little over an hour later we left the Embassy with my emergency passport in hand. Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures of the Embassy... oops!




We rushed back to the train station as fast as we could to trade in our tickets and get on a train back to London. We made the 1215pm with about 15 minutes to spare! Since I was sleeping on the way over, I missed us going into the Chunnel. My phone only had about 3% battery remaining, but I hit record just in time to catch us going in.



Whew! That's all for now.