College graduation trip with my daughter.
This story is called les ampoules de Paris, or, The Blisters of Paris.
FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006
Where to begin? With Natasha along, I have no need to journal as I go. I see now, when I travel alone, it's necessary for me to journal, to retain my own sanity, because I speak to no one conversationally. I speak mainly just the mere "service" pleasantries and requests. Traveling alone, I might as well be mute.
With Natasha along, there's someone to share every discovery and observation. There's someone to point to things for, someone to laugh with. This has so seldom been the case in my previous travels.
So, I'll try to back-track. Flight over: nothing to report; smooth sailing, no delays. Detroit airport is cool -- Motown shop, smoking allowed in a sports bar and a very nice sushi restaurant where we had a late lunch before departure. Individual movies-on-demand on the flight over. I tried fitfully to watch the new Casanova, but wasn't in the mood. Natasha watched the King Kong remake, and Woody Allen's Matchpoint, which I'd already seen. Into Amsterdam Schiphol, no problem. One hour between flights -- just enough time for Natasha to eat a sandwich and we had coffee. Then on to Paris Charles de Gaulle -- quick 45-minute flight. We found a restroom to wash up a bit, then to the taxi stand. Nice Basque driver who had actually been in Austin in 1973. And, on the radio, I swear to God, the sound track from a Monsieur Hûlot Jacques Tati movie played. Great, cinematic taxi ride: first, the graffiti'd housing projects outside the Périphérique, then tall industrial and office buildings, then the first glimpses of nice apartment neighborhoods, then, the first breath-taking glimpse of Sacre Coeur, then everything speeds up. So much to look at: pedestrians, motorcycles, designer shops as you hit Opèra. Boum! La Concorde with its black, gold and verdigris statues -- obelisk -- Tuileries -- Louvre. Then we're on Quai Voltaire and at the hotel. Euro 48 cab ride.
Great news: the hotel clerk says our room is nearly ready and in ten minutes we are riding up the ancient, creaky two-person ascenseur to the top floor and Room 54, exactly as pictured and described. It's next to rooms once occupied by Wagner and Baudelaire, but has no ghost, the desk clerk informs us. A sweet little room, white, with paisley curtains on a green ground covering floor to ceiling French windows that open up on grille-work and a view of the Seine, the Louvre, the bridge (Pont des Artistes) and the bocquanistes' stalls.
The bateaux mouches tour incessantly on the Seine and the traffic is crazy out front of the hotel, but I find the sounds strangely restful once I crash into bed at night. It stays fully light until after 10:00 p.m., and it's fully light again by 6:00 a.m. I swear, Paris gets more sunlight hours than we do back in Austin. I'm envious. No wonder they eat at 9:00 p.m. And the shops close up by 7:00 p.m.
We left our bags in the hotel room and struck off. It's only just noon, so we go to a tabac and buy Gitanes avec filtres, then find a neighborhood brasserie for onion soup, plats du jour and coffee. Then down Rue du Bac (where D'Artagnon supposedly lived) to get Euro from the ATM in nearby St. Germain-des-Près, then window-shopping, then chic people-watching over another coffee at Les Deux Magots. There's a funny commemorative sign at the intersection in front of Les Deux Magots dedicated to Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir. The Existentialist Corner. We continued to browse the neighborhood, got caught in a shower, and ducked into a wine store where we bought a fabulous Bordeaux 2000 for Euro 13. And a wine tool. Then we found a Provence fabric shop with beach bags, scarves and tablecloths, but, alas! It was Monday and the shop was closed. We wandered and wandered, making it a very long trek back to the hotel when we decided to return at 4:00. We took a nap until 7:00, roused ourselves, and went in search of dinner. We crossed to the Right Bank and, by chance, a flickering "pizza" sign drew us down a dark, narrow street. And what do we find across from the cafe? Vero-Dodat, one of the legendary 19th century passages I had planned to search out during our time in Paris. Lovely, melancholy, deserted except for one old woman painstakingly studying the menu outside the passage's one closed-Monday restaurant. Alas, the passage's shops are now mostly vacant. They have dark wood, mirror and glass facades. One shop sold espadrilles, and its stock was piled in neat towers in identical tan boxes. One now-deserted shop's facade had ghostly vestiges of signs advertising cartes des visites printed quickly -- probably left over from the Victorian era. Vero-Dodat was built in 1827. The atmosphere is much like the Brothers' Quay stop-action animated short film, Street of Crocodiles.
So, at dinner Natasha tried les escargots and grappled nobly with the snail-eating implements, and we shared a small pizza. We were the cafe's only customers, and French music played from somewhere -- Charles Aznavour, among others. We prowled the by-then closed shops in the arcades on Rivoli afterward, then, exhausted, collapsed into our clean white beds. We hadn't really slept for 48 hours.
Okay, so now comes the hard part and trying to remember what we did when. I will write some landmarks down, and then I will try to reconstruct which day we went where.
MONDAY:
Les Deux Magots and St. Germain-des-Près. Vero-Dodat, Rivoli.
TUESDAY:
I am crushed to learn La Samaritaine, my favorite Parisian department store with its Art Nouveau-tiled and curling ironwork interior, is closed indefinitely for conservation.
First metro ride: I see a ticker-tape sign in the station that says LES MYSTÈRES DE PARIS. This is astounding, only because my Parisian drawing series of last year has the same name!
Notre Dame, Cimitère Montmartre (we put cherries on the graves of our idols), Sacre Coeur, L'Apin Agile and the rest of Montmartre (where we found the Amelie grocery store), touristy Place de Terte (with big-eyed children postcards!), the Moulin Rouge, Pigalle, Bateau mouche ride at nightfall past the illuminated Eiffel Tower. At midnight, after the bateau mouche ride, we ate exquisite artisan cheeses, bread, pears and cherries we'd gotten earlier from street markets, and drank that bottle of Bordeaux in bed, hungry as hell and chilled to the bone.
Tuesday's main event was my thinking I had been pick-pocketed on the metro in Montmartre, only to later find I'd hidden my Euro from myself in another little purse in my main bag. Utterly bummed out, then ecstatic when I discovered my money. Lunch at a great little cafe at the foot of the hill! Kiki Monkey for my purse zipper!
Ah, attendez-vous un moment! I think Tuesday's the day the hotel caught on fire. I was in the bathtub about 4:00 p.m. shaving my legs as we took a mid-day break from walking. The fire alarm began to sound. We ignored it for about fifteen minutes, thinking it would stop, and we didn't smell anything burning or see smoke. Finally, I got out of the tub and called the front desk. Says I, "L'hotel, c'est en feu?" "Oui, Madame," replies the deadpan desk clerk. I began to rush around, wet and naked, trying to get the cash, credit cards and passports out of the room safe and into my purse. Someone bangs on the door, unlocks it, and there's a woman in the room telling me, "Pardon, you must get out now!" So I threw on jeans and a t-shirt, we ran down five flights of stairs, and out in the street. Handsome "sanspeurs," as I incorrectly call Parisian firemen, have snakes of waterhoses in the hotel lobby, and sirens are blaring and lights are flashing outside. The desk clerk has a print-out of the guests in the hotel's 33 rooms and is attempting to account for everyone. Natasha and I think it's rather funny. We have the cameras, the cash, the credit cards and the passports, so we're okay. I say to the desk clerk, "We can't do anything here, so we'll go to the bar and drink for a while." He say, "Madame, the bar is closed, the hotel is on fire!" I say, "No, not the hotel bar. Some other bar." He says, "Ah, oui! Bonne idée!" and Natasha and I head off for a couple of hours. When we came back, the furor was over, and everything seemed normal. No damage we could see. Supposedly it was the insulation over one of the ancient boilers in the basement.
WEDNESDAY
Through the Tuilleries with its carousel deserted and unattended, past ducks in the circular pools, to Place de la Concord and the spot where Marie-Antoinette was beheaded, all the way down the Champs-Elysées to Arch de Triumph. Then, to the Marais, and Place des Vosges and Musée Picasso and Musée Carnevelet and chic window-shopping. The best was glasses frames in a suite with matching earrings, necklaces and bracelets. And then, malheuresement, a cold rain started. So -- rain plan = Louvre, from 5:00 to its late closing.
And, as I remember, Wednesday was the day Natasha crashed from exhaustion and dehydration. She's not used to keeping up mom's intense tourist pace, which is slowing, due to BLISTERS. And bone pounding against bone in Mom's poor, fifty-year-old pieds. Natasha crawls onto her bed mid-afternoon, whipped, after downing a bottle of water. Poor baby. And I think she's homesick for her friends. The solution: Mom to bocquaniste's to buy a cigarette box with that famous tit-pinching painting at the Louvre on it as un petit cadeau for sleeping Natasha. This pleases her and her spirits seem to brighten a little.
Since Wednesday, I became a faithful user of Soulage les Ampoules, 6 pansements petit pour les pieds. It seems likely my pinkie toe will have to come off when we return to the E.U. Paris has claimed one of my toes! My feet look like I have leprosy from all the blisters!
THURSDAY
An early start to the day at the Musée D'Orsay and, in late afternoon, we give in to the irresistable impulse to buy shoes and head to les grands magasins in Boulevard Haussmann. Galleries LaFayette and Printemps -- four pairs of shoes purchased between the two of us, so we take a Euro 6 ride back to the hotel with the boxes. That evening, a lovely dinner in an incredibly decorated Moroccan restaurant in the 1eme arrondisement. I see a tiny dormouse in its restroom, upstairs with a private Morroccan dining salon, all dark and deserted.
FRIDAY
The game plan is to get up early and go to Les Catacombes. Alas, the line stretches around the block, and we can't waste time. So, we head off instead to Cimitière Montparnasse to visit the graves of Baudelaire, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean Seberg and others, passing through an intriguing antiques street market to get there (costumes, lace, buttons, books, lamps). I have no cherries to place on the graves of my idols today, so they get Gitanes instead. Afterward, we channel F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Juliet Greco, Yves Klein and God only knows who else and have lunch at that last holdout of old Montparnasse, La Coupole -- oysters! We then explore the Latin Quartier, and find cheap clothes and a delightful anime/graphic novel figurine store where we purchase some souvenirs and gifts. We then head for the Jeu de Paume to check out the astounding Cindy Sherman retrospective that's currently exhibited there. Natasha takes off by herself to get an ice cream in the Tuilleries while I rest my poor feet outside. We go to a simple brasserie near the hotel for a late dinner, and share a creme brulée.
This trip, everything seems less awesome than the time I first saw it eleven years ago. I guess I'm growing jaded, having now seen Rome, Milan twice, Florence twice, Venice twice, Dublin, London and Vienna. I'll never forget how absolutely blown away and moved I was the very first time. Everything seems somehow diminished with familiarity. Like how subsequent massages never feel as good as the very first one. The surprise is gone?
If it were not for the incessant walking (and the "chic factor" that makes these terminally cool women wear excruciating high, stylish heels), I could almost certainly live in Paris. I like the coffee and wine drinking. I like the exquisite stuff in the windows. I like the Parisian style. I like the good dogs sitting at tables in bars and cafes. Not so much: the metro, nearly getting run over by motorcycles.
Natasha asks, "Why are there so many books everywhere?" I have to remind her that the French pride themselves on being intellectuals -- plus they can read on the subway since they aren't driving.
All the young people here are wired to their iPods or cell phones. They even talk on their phones in the metro.
I am simply awed by these chic Parisiennes walking miles in their high, excruciating heels. How do they do it? Natasha and I kept finding statues at the D'Orsay who were examining their feet. We assume, for blisters.
SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2006
Le dernier cri à Paris
So we get up very early and cross the Seine to the Rive Droite. Hardly anyone's stirring. Only the old, walking their dogs, and a few joggers. We get coffee and croissants in a 1eme arrondisement cafe just as it opens and are the only customers.
Then, we began to follow the "plan" to guide us through the shopping passages for two or three hours. I found it on the internet, thanks to a romantic and moody Parisienne photographer who posted it.
First, GALERIES et JARDIN du PALAIS ROYAL. Late 18th century. Incredible. Like the arcades in Venice surrounding the Piazzo San Marco. Dark, moody, Gorey-esque. Expect to see the vampire LeStat step out of an arch at any moment. Watchmaker, military honors medallions, swords, the vintage dress shop where Reese Witherspoon's Academy Award rented vintage gown came from. Exquisite, dark cafe with autographed movie star photos; hello, Jean Moreau. Marble mosaics. More than half the storefronts now ghostly, deserted. I would LIVE in one of these shops! Ghost memories of gambling houses, duels, cabarets, brothels, emerge in the early light.
Second, GALERIES COLBERT. Recently completely restored. A guard stands by. We peek in, but don't enter. A little too "done" and Italianate for my tastes.
We soon pass a street sign that tells us Collette lived and died on the second floor of the building. GALERIES VIVIENNE -- fantastic! More atmosphere, but less rundown than Vero-Dodat. High occupancy with modern couture shops, including Jean-Paul Gaultier. Bright and cheerful. A middle-aged man has morning tea with his aged mother at a cafe.
PASSAGE DES PANORAMAS. Like Vivienne, but includes the back door of the Comedie Française and a theatrical variety artist booking agent.
PASSAGE JOUFFROY. Next to Grevin Waxworks, with Hotel Chopin, where the composer lived, and, I believe, died. Toy shops! Miniature shops! We buy 19th century paper scraps and Petit Prince gifts.
Finally, PASSAGE VERDEAU, the seediest of the lot. Cheap Chinese-manufactured clothes, but a great movie poster and stills shop.
We emerge to find a candy store, La Mere de Famille, which must not have changed at all since 1920. Chocolate has cocoa percentages marked on it, up to 96%, I think. We go conservative and buy a dark, 70% cocoa bar and some real French burnt peanuts. The shop also displays marzipan fruits, animals and pastilles, and sugared almond wedding sweets and ribbon bags to hold them. Chic jade green boxes with lavender ribbons. Natasha buys candy for her friends here.
It's now 11:30 or so and we have stopped only once for coffee in La Bourse because Natasha was scared by a public toilet. We saw a homeless guy pushing a shopping basket to which was attached a large glass jug of what appeared to be piss. Probably his own.
So we decide to purchase items for a picnic lunch in the Les Halles street market. If the line at Les Catacombes is long like yesterday, we'll eat in the queue. I buy a stereotypical French string shopping bag at a hardware store for Euro 4, and we pick up a quarter pound of premium pate (Eu 3.50), a bagette (EU 0.38), a button of fresh goat cheese (Eu 2.20) and a bottle of Sancerre (EU 3.30) and get back on the metro. To Catacombs. Good news! Hardly a line at all, so to the park behind to properly enjoy our picnic on a bench. There is no way we can eat all the pate. We feed the birds left-over bread.
I can't verbalize too much about the impact of the catacombes except to say it's miles below street level, down a steep spiral staircase. Cold, damp, very dark, smells pleasantly mossy and the walls are stone-cold and wet to the touch. Water sometimes drips from overhead. Avenues to travel are clearly marked and cordoned off. Other avenues, stretching to infinity, are visible past iron gates. The sight of all those skulls and bones is shocking at first, then sad. Only skulls and long bones seem to be piled up and arranged. Where are the pelvises and ribcages, the hands, the feet?
Placards inform us in French that most of these folks were removed from "ancient cemeteries" and churches in 1850-1880. I assume, to make way for new housing developments -- like in Poltergeist. I tried to picture the Resistance patriots holding their secret meetings, and it's not hard to do, in that labyrinth. When we were leaving, I shined my flashlight (Clever girl! I had it on a keychain in my purse!) down a gated alley. It was sad to see the mountains of shattered skulls and bones mouldering in the dark, as if the ovens at Aushchwitz had been opened and shoveled out there. Lots of Momento Mori sentiments on carved plaques throughout. Moving -- sad -- timeless -- strangely peaceful. A sign at the entrance warns it's not a place for children or "sensitive persons." Touring the catacombes was evidently all the rage for the Victorian English on the Grand Tour; black map marks on the ceiling put there for those visitors still guide you along the routes.
Then, out of the catacombes and on to search for the proper metro to take us to the doll museum. It was 3:30 by that time, but our trek took us pleasantly and unexpectedly through a Montparnasse street market to get to the proper metro line. Finally! Centre Georges Pompidou, and, nearby, Musee des Poupées. It was great, well-curated and less dark, dusty and scary than Pollock's Toy Museum in London. Lovingly done. Lots of mothers, grandmothers and little girls there. Highlights: HUGE Jumeaus, Maurice Chevalier and Mistinguet dolls, photos of real children with toys now in the collection. I bought two tiny black baby dolls for my collection. And for further therapy. I'm always trying to replace the two black baby dolls of my early childhood, the ones my grandmother forced me to give the neighbor girl with scarlet fever when I was a pre-schooler. Les Poupées Noires.
We limped back to the hotel, past the bocquanistes a final time. 6:00 p.m. Crashed a while, Natasha packed, we admired our treasures and consolidated everything. I save so much paper and bags and labels -- to use in collages.
We had a laughing fit over the by then five-hour-old pate. We wanted to fling it out our window and hopefully onto the unsuspecting heads of novice tourists on the annoying seven language tour bateau mouche with the flashing lights and loud speakers. Like that hair clog remover commercial on t.v. where the gross clog gets blasted "far away" and lands on the snotty French people's elegant cafe table. (But, we resisted.)
We rested a couple of hours before limping toward St. Germain-des-Prés a final time for pizza and salad and chic window browsing sans tourists, since the shops were by then closed. Then we limped all the way back to the hotel. Natasha's now sawing logs. It's nearly 11. I better go to sleep, since the airport shuttle comes for us tomorrow at 9:30.
Time: I'm experiencing it so differently here. The days begin early and are very, very full. We do and see as much in one of these days as a tourist as we do in a week or more at home. Resolved: I must maximize my time the rest of my life and get more out of it. Like I am here, on this trip.
*******
So, as I did before, I'll try to recap what's happened since I last wrote. Which seriously seems like a month ago now. But it was really only three days.
Sunday morning in Paris:
We woke very early, finished packing, went for a last early morning neighborhood walk. Returned to a cafe we'd visited a couple of times before. Handsome young guys cleaned and prepared the cafe for the day's business, and we finally got the cinematic "kitty cup" (giant bowl) of coffee. A waiter ran to a nearby bakery and returned with oven-warm croissants for us. Hardly anyone in the neighborhood was awake and active. Our tabac was closed Sundays, so we couldn't get more Gitanes avec filtres to take to Amsterdam. Returned to the hotel up a new street closer to Musee de Monnaie and browsed the antique store windows a last time. Photographed the Nureyev plaque -- I forgot to mention he lived (and died) next door to our hotel.
Airport shuttle arrived early to pick up two other fares after us. Nice, unexpected review of the Marais. A car ride is a nice way to see everything we'd walked through, and I was astounded at the amount of territory we'd covered. Truly, we did every central arrondisement at least once during the week. Then, the high speed trip to Charles de Gaulle. Very light traffic on a Sunday morning so early. We checked in, got to our gate, and I enjoyed KLM's fine selection of free French newspapers. When we boarded, we were delighted to find we'd been upgraded to First Class! You know what that means! Two seats to a row! Champagne! And a better lunch! KLM rules!
The flight from Paris was very short, so we soon arrived at Schiphol, retrieved Natasha's checked bag and got a cab. Euro 38 to houseboat. Louk and his little daughter, Juliette, were on top of their boat when we drove up and let us into ours, which is simply adorable. And even better than in the photos which seduced me into renting it! It's entirely furnished in Ikea, or built-ins. The sky-blue bathroom with its industrial stainless steel floors and counter and gorgeous graceful tub and sink is the best bathroom I've ever seen. Skylights over the tub, portholes, skylights throughout the boat, wood floors, white walls. I could live here FOREVER. Plenty of space, and well-designed flow. Natasha points out it's the same size as a standard trailer. We immediately put our filthy jeans in to wash and dry, and sat out on the deck to watch rowboats pass by on the Amstel and to scope out the neighboring boats. We're moored in Der Pijp.
We decided to strike out to explore our new neighborhood, and to try to find a tabac open, armed with a Streetwise map. Without strippenkarten with which to ride the tram, we were forced to strike out on foot in what intuitively semed to be the way to go, judging from bicycle traffic. It turns out we were wrong -- we walked through miles of run-down ethnic neighborhoods in housing built after World War II, not the picturesque 17th century. Sunday: no businesses open. The Dutch must be religious. Finally we curved off on a main highway and decided to try to find a bar open. It was freezing cold and windy. We found one with a kind of Black Forest motif open, dark wood, dark bricks. Out front stood a huge crane, inscrutable even when I approached him; he slowly walked away from me as I spoke to him. We entered to find ourselves in a friendly neighborhood bar with a regulation pool table. The bartender spoke English, and I was able to order my first jenevers and Natasha an Amstel beer. Warmed up a little, we struck out again, passing a huge windmill. Then, wonder of wonders, we found a grocery store open and decided to lay in provisions and eat dinner on the boat. Cheerful, clean, bright store, with Euro prices that seemed totally equivalent to or cheaper than Austin's. We walked with four heavy grocery bags back through what we later figured out was Ousterpark. Got back to the blessed cosy boat, made dinner and coffee which we enjoyed in front of the t.v. (no t.v. in the room in Paris). We'd walked three hours!
We soon realized Dutch is indecipherable. The subtitles on the screen in English don't help much in figuring it out, and it isn't that much like German, as we'd been told. It has all kinds of J's in it. We have no idea of the phoentic rules, and for that reason had been unsuccessful in learning a few key phrases in advance from travel books. Luckily, there are plenty of English language shows from the U.S. and the BBC on Dutch t.v.: movies, Oprah and Dr. Phil, C.S.I. And Dutch home-shopping network. And Dutch, French and German M-TV. The Dutch have an unfair advantage: they know so much more about American culture than we know about theirs because of t.v.
We ate, got the clean clothes out of the drier, took marvelous hot baths, and crashed hard about midnight -- with no real sense yet of Amsterdam.
MONDAY, MAY 29, 2006
Up early to discover Amsterdam is cold and windy as a mofo. We had to layer all our clothes to keep warm enough. Found a convenience store that sold strippenkarten for the tram. Then took off to Centraal Station to try to start at the top and work our way back down the city. Coffee at a cafe, map and compass consulting and then on a route Natasha, master navigator, figured out through the Jordaan to the Pink Point (queer info kiosk) and the Homo Monument
Nearby we saw the huge line snaked round the block at Anne Frankhuis and looked at the building itself from across the street. And then we found the statue of Anne and the impromptu daily shrine made at its feet by visitors. Next door to the Frank's hiding place is a huge Christian church. The Franks must perpetually have heard the tolling of the churchbells while they were in hiding at the secret annex. It made me a little sick.
We browsed through a great Monday antique and bric-a-brac street market nearby. And here my remembrance of the day begins to fade. We walked through many beautiful neighborhoods on canals, with the characteristic Amsterdam architecture -- chocolate colors, white trim, gabled, always with a hook hanging from the highest point of the house's facade, reflections of the building shimmering in the water of the canals. After much gawking and walking, we decided to return to the boat to rest a little. A huge line waited for our outbound tram, and then a cabdriver drove by and shouted to everyone that the tram line was down. We were able to share a cab with two other women who were waiting and headed toward our area to get home. The funny cab driver -- a kind of Dutch Don Rickles -- loved Las Vegas and gave me his cell phone number to call to arrange our ride to the airport when we departed Thursday.
So we rested a moment before striking out for nearby Cuypmarkt, supposedly the longest street market in Europe judging from its p.r. in travel books -- but I kind of doubt it. Paris and Vienna both have bigger ones, at least to my reckoning. Cheap, Chinese-manufactured trendy clothing, produce, flowers, cheese, a booth where you can eat the legendary raw herring (ew!). Various cheap trifles purchased there, including Eu 5 Indian scarves.
We made dinner, then took the tram to Rembrandtplein, near where Natasha believed we'd find the lesbian bars. The tram ride took us past the incredible art deco Tushchinski movie theatre, the dream constructed by a Polish Jew killed during the Holocaust who believed in the transformative powers of cinema. Rembrandtplein is full of huge, looming, spot-lit bars. And then, we got lost. We must have taken a left when we should have taken a right, and ended up walking miles in a handsome, upscale residential neighborhood at twilight -- saw lots of dogs being walked. Saw Magere Bruge (Skinny bridge) and Carre, built to house the circus in the 19th century. Still lost, we admitted defeat and turned a corner to try to find our way back to where we could catch the tram home -- and immediately stumbled across the bar Natasha sought, Vive la Vie. Intimate, dark, with photos of female movie star icons, including Shirley Temple! Natasha and I had a nice, long chat over beer and jenevers. Great music in the bar.
We are indeed intrepid travelers, my daughter and I, and I salute us. We caught the very last tram to the boat after midnight in the freezing wind. We could see our breath, and ice crystals in the air. Natasha unlocked the boat's door, we tumbled down the ladder and into our blessed, warm beds.
TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2006.
We sleep in until 10, because it's pouring buckets of rain. Then up, to Museumplein to visit the Van Gogh Museum for the Rembrandt/Caravaggio comparision show, a temporary exhibit. My favorite: St. Catherine and her wheel. Natasha's: Head of Holofernes. In my opinion, there's simply no comparing Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Caravaggio is without a doubt the better painter. After the show, we stumbled across a wonderful post card store with thousands of cards filed alphabetically by subject. We explored the Bloemenmarkt (flower market) and coveted flowers, black tulips, cactii and bulbs we can't import to the U.S. We stumbled across a fabulous hammock store nearby, and I bought Natasha a hammock there for her new place when she moves out. At lunch we finally got to sample the legendary Amsterdam french fries with mayonnaise-- but the mayo tastes good, like it's got some kind of mustard or spices in it. On the street they come in paper cones.
And, on Tuesday, I discovered the key to foot comfort: a EU 3 pair of black tourist socks with the shield of Amsterdam on them. They've done my poor, ravaged feet a world of good -- although I would ordinarily NEVER wear socks and sandals. But my feet were freezing! We had to buy caps, too. Natasha got a sensible grey one, but I decided on a EU 5 Che Guevara cap with "revolution" stitched on it, at a tourist stand. Plus Natasha is now sporting a rather nice Eu 5 saffron-colored pashmina for her throat.
Mid-afternoon: to Dam's Square and Nieuwe Kerk. A zoo of tourists, cheap souvenirs, fast food -- out of automats, in one place! Horse carts to rent for tours. For a couple of moments I pondered hiring a rickshaw to tour the Red Light District. I feel sort of sorry for Amsterdam being saddled with a reputation because of the Red Light District. It's maybe less than 1% of the land-mass in central Amsterdam, and a total anomaly with the rest of the city (and hidden away where you don't just stumble on it), yet it's the first thing most people think of when you say Amsterdam. What a shame, really. During the afternoon, no windows were occupied by prostitutes, but the area was abuzz with porn shops, bondage shops, leather shops, tattoo parlors, piercing parlors, rubber shops, you name it. All of this kind of freaked me out, honestly. Packs of roving, scary men, many of them on r&r from off-shore drilling outfits, filled the streets. A dark man yells at me, "Hey, blondie! You! You want a job?" YIKES. So we head out.
Then we found the cute hot gay bar we'd read about, Getto, for a quick drink and restroom stop. Great rockabilly music, and a white bar cat, who energetically applied himself to his scratching point to the beat of the music.
Then back to the boat, hot baths, and dinner in a great neighborhood cafe, Bloemer's. Delicious food, great music, fun crowd of young people. Hand-made, excellent mojitos. Finally got to sample bitterballen, an Amsterdam specialty -- small, fried breaded (meat? fish?) balls eaten with mustard -- kind of like hushpuppies. Home at 10. Natasha to bed. It's 11:30 now. I am falling asleep as I write.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2006, 9:30 p.m.
Another unbelievably cold, windy day with ice crystals in the air. At 11:00 a.m., a bank thermometer said 11C (52F). The wind chill made it seem much worse. Everyone tells us it's a freak storm, that it should be sunny and warm by now. Oh, well. Feels like January or February in Austin to us.
But at least today we started off properly attired in layers of shirts, socks and caps, as well as yards of scarves. It was pouring when we awoke, so we took our time starting out. Our first stop was the cafe of the Christmas Twins, The Backstage. We'd learned about it from an Amsterdam travel show we'd seen on television. We had to cool our heels until it opened at 10, but then Gary and his neighbor Wilhelm (who looked like the lovechild of Wilhelm DaFoe and Mick Jagger) opened up the wild and whimsically painted joint. It's coffee and crocheted hat heaven, with memorabilia of the twins' cabaret career displayed everywhere. Gary, dressed in purple, gave Natasha an impromptu psychic reading: "Brilliant, versatile, but lazy. Lacks self-confidence." He told her she could achieve all her dreams if she'd only go for them, believing. He had nothing for me, except he kept swearing he'd met me before. We had a great chat, and he spoke lovingly of his dead twin, the "mastermind" of the pair who always wore shorts to show off his great legs. Gary was so sweet and modest. Natasha photographed him, then he gave us autographed cards. How Linda Montano would LOVE him! What a lovely, funny, sweet spirit. And he must be in his eighties, but has the sweet, smooth face of a Black American Indian, a Buffalo soldier descendant. This was one of the most profoundly wonderful and memorable experiences of the whole trip. You can learn more about the Christmas Twins from this article:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=66&story_id=183&name=All+the+world's+a+stage
We passed about an hour with Gary, then set off with the map and compass in the bitter cold to search out a minor wax-works and creepy doll hospital adjoining it. We got totally lost, as usual, and ended up, instead, at Joods Historich Museum. Which, as luck would have it, is right next to Waterlooplein street market, which we had hoped to find and visit later in the day. How fortunate for us! We'd have never found it if we had cold-heartedly set out to find it. Our travel genie was with us!
Waterlooplein is a great street market with new and second-hand clothes, jewelry, etc. I bought Natasha a pocket watch. She bought suspenders. I bought a slinky red dress from Italy, a witchy paisley skirt, and an Indonesian batik apron-skirt. Natasha got a batik wristband with hidden zipper pocket. The stall owner gave us both a free leather bracelet. By the time we'd finished shopping we were frozen again and our noses were running, so we ducked into a nearby cafe for coffee and lunch. Afterward, I used a Dutch pay phone successfully, feeding it Euro coins to reconfirm our flight home tomorrow and to order a cab from Rene, the laughing cabdriver from the tram break-down rescue the other day.
After lunch, we went to the Stopera to mail postcards and to a nearby grocery store for chocolate to bring home as gifts. I scored a Droste cocoa tin with a nun on it! We passed an old man cranking an antique hurdy-gurdy.
Natasha and I agreed we were totally pooped and chilled to the bone, so we caught the tram off Dam's Square and Romin to come back to the boat for a while for coffee and a snugly nap. Really, by then there was little left we wanted to see in Amsterdam. We're both running out of steam now. Both of us are exhausted and not just a little homesick. We miss our little Buster and all our people. So we slept for a couple of hours, then I got up and packed for our departure tomorrow, cleaned the boat up a little, and washed and dried dishes.
We went for a final dinner at Boehmer's around the corner. It was nice to be somewhere warm and crowded with happy, noisy people this gray, cold day.
I wrote a thank-you note in our hosts' guest book (today we FINALLY saw Suzanne with Juliette and a new baby) and now I'm journaling as Natasha watches t.v. on the couch beside me, under a duvet. She's packed. We have LOADS of souvenirs and gifts and must check our clothing baggage tomorrow on the flights. Gifts for everyone -- YAY!!!
I'll have to recap my impressions of Amsterdam in a couple of days. For now, all I can say is, the Dutch are so not pussies. We had to buy hats, but the Dutch ride around hatless always in the cold wind on their bicycles. And nobody wears gloves. What a hearty bunch! Even Gary of the Christmas Twins restated that this May is the coldest one he's experienced in thirty years. As sure as we depart, it will be all sunshine and clear skies!
Oh, well. At least Natasha and I got a temporary reprieve from Austin's unbearably hot summer.
This was exactly the right amount of time in Amsterdam for me: three nights, four days. That's plenty to see everything if you stay close in; we spent a good deal of time just getting back and forth from the boat. But it was so nice to be in this little oasis of cosy calm away from the throngs of ganja-stupid youngsters in city center. I'd recommend the houseboat option to anyone wanting something a little different and totally Amsterdam.
We're leaving, and we still know hardly any Dutch.
Kaas = cheese
Nee = no
Romin = window
Roken = smoking
(And we never made it to the Sheepfarten Museum.)
All for now. I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. Up early for the airport. 10:30, and it's just now beginning to get dark!
Back home.
The flights home were unremarkable and the comic cabdriver, Rene, arrived just at the time we'd arranged. It was sad to leave the boat, but a relief to leave the cold and wind to come home to Buster.
I feel a little disoriented and beaten today. Natasha and I went out for breakfast and had chips and salsa to start it. We're both craving spicy food.
I have to let the whole trip wash over me now. As usual, I'll miss the architectural beauty of Europe, the great coffee, the great bread. I will not miss the indecipherable, enigmatic Dutch language, feeling lost and vulnerable and always consulting maps, or the unseasonably cold weather.
I think what will remain, aside from the joy and dream-come-true of sharing it all with Natasha, is my memories of the passages in Paris. I love them, their desolate, romantic melancholy, the sense that a lonely vampire could emerge from a darkened doorway. I'm so grateful to Natasha for being willing to devote a morning to searching them out.
I had a beautiful dream last night of coming on a passage, but it was set around a canal bridge, like in Amsterdam. Shops displayed plaster big-head statuettes of silent movie stars, like Chaplin, and other memorabilia that appeals to me so much. The passage was decorated with gold-glittering Art Nouveau tile mosaics, and a tiled fountain in the center where people playfully waded and soaked their feet. In the distance, I saw Sacre Coeur on the horizon, and, in the sky, an enigmatic, blinking neon sign. First it said, "Hotel de Ville." Then it changed to "Hotel de Vol" (of flight, or fast break-aways). And, finally, it changed to "Hotel de Vent" (of the wind). I felt a sense of profound happiness when I awoke from the dream.
I loved this trip. I hope it was as profoundly enjoyable and important to Natasha as it was for me, and that the trip was everything she'd hoped it would be.
