On to Amsterdam

After two full days in Paris, I know I was looking forward to an easy day of travel. We were taking the train from Paris to Amsterdam, and after an interesting metro experience with too much luggage (I think it’s an American thing), we arrived at the Paris station only to figure out that the ticket machines would not accept American credit cards. Luckily, the ticket agent would, but by then, we were going to either pay triple for first class or miss our train. In the interest of sanity and saving money, we decided to take a later train and armed with the appropriate tickets, set out to find a place for a café au lait where we could wait for the next train. A few hours later, bagged lunch in hand and postcards sent off, we were comfortably ensconced on our train to Amsterdam, complete with Internet and smelly European passengers (seriously people – smoking makes you smell bad!).



Upon arrival in Amsterdam, I managed to completely screw up our directions and send us off in the wrong direction looking for the hotel. And let's face it, it’s pretty hard to figure out which canal is which! After reorienting ourselves at the train station, we grabbed a cab and were at the hotel in no time (which, just for the record, had one of the bests breakfasts out of any of the hotels – and in the Netherlands, they put chocolate sprinkles on their bread at breakfast!). As we had a few hours to kill before the Spain game (are you sensing a pattern here), we looked through the hotel’s guide book to find something to do. And that’s when J. saw it (which she probably regrets now) – the advertisement for the Torture Museum! And it turns out that it wasn’t far at all from our hotel! After some cajoling, J. finally agreed to go with me (I think she was sick of art too), and we headed out to learn more about the history of torture!

In my defense, I’m not crazy or sick and twisted (well, not that much). As a professor in a criminal justice department, we often talk about punishment and to that end, torture. Plus, it really wasn’t a torture museum per se – more like a history of cruel and unusual punishments. And it was fun! Here are some of the cool things we saw:

 

After the Torture Museum, we strolled through the Flower Market and I got the chance to pick up a few postcards. And also be completely terrified by some others. Let’s just say that Amsterdam takes its drugs and its Red Light District very seriously and I was shocked by some of the images we saw in the otherwise family friendly souvenir shops! But I did manage to pick up a few things that will be really handy in my Illegal Drugs and Crime in America class!

By then, we were exhausted and hungry, so we headed over to Rembrandt Square (which was right behind our hotel) and ended up having one of the best dinners of our trip. It was at an Indonesian restaurant and I’m pretty sure it’s the most vegetables we saw in all of Europe, outside of Spain. The meal was excellent and we were ready to find a place to watch the Spain game! We found a low-key bar with a friendly bar tender and some other Spain fans and we were good to. We even met a fellow American (seriously, it’s like they were searching us out).

It was a great introduction to the city! Spain won the game, the people were welcoming, and despite our complete inability to read Dutch, we didn’t poison or embarrass ourselves. Always a good start to visiting a new city!