You're what the French call les incompetent...

Note to self: NEVER I repeat NEVER take another Eurolines overnight bus!!

The bus left Rotterdam at around midnight and arrived in Paris around 7am. WORST bus ride EVER! The seats were literally like half the size of train seats and the bus driver was a huge jerk! No bathroom, no way to sleep, no lights, no english speaking driver, oh yeah and don't even think of trying to bring a cake on board!...

This man had to flag down a guy riding a bike to take his cake because the a'hole driver wouldn't let him bring it on (it was packaged neatly in a box)

The Eiffel Tower was a bit of a let down but this definitely wasn't


I think I had 4 crepes (in 2 and a half days)

And met Spaniards while waiting

The girls we stayed with said that people throw parties down here!!


My dad was right. Montmartre was definitely worth a visit.



French things...







Lauren and Analore

They had two dogs and were living on the median.

Trying to be artsy in a church...


And this is to show Jess that I definitely didn't forget about my favorite part of France!! :)

Dead cities, lots of pictures and random updates.

I think it's the second scene in 28 Days Later where the dude wakes up in the hospital and walks outside to find London completely deserted. Well, that's what Middleburg is like on a Sunday afternoon.

Middleburg is the capital of Zeeland which is a little less than 2 hours south of Rotterdam on the border of Belgium. It's another "cute" dutch town.

This little boy was just walking his little pup all around the church all alone...

Then we met this little guy. I can't remember his name but it was definitly something "latin" sounding, like Paco or something hahaha...




Oh yeah and horseback riding is cool too...

The other day I had to get up earlier than usual to go a few doors down to the bakery for bread. This is what I saw when I went outside...

They were asking 5cents for their crafts. I made their day (or year) by giving them each 20 cent coins :)...

For Kristen's birthday we went to this fun Italian restaurant. This cute jar is now hanging out in my bedroom...

This is what my 8euro lunch looks like from Spirit. It's buffet style (like Whole Foods) and pretty yummy...


Random things,

My new favorite Dutch word is "badonkt". It means "thanks". It just sounds really funny and I can't bring myself to actually use it.

I tried to make hummus but failed pretty bad. I've done it a bunch of times at home with canned beans but I really wanted to try it with raw beans. But yeah, definitely didn't cook the beans enough. Definitely came out with yucky rawish hummus stuff. Definitely threw it away.

Things I want to start next next week-

1. I want to go to the market and buy random fabrics to make a quilt.
2. Start cooking more yummy things that remind me of home. Like tacos and tofu scramble. yuuum!
3. Figure out how to sneak into the movies. (Lukusz and I tried twice and failed big time) I don't have that confident flare that I used to. Though the dumb/american/blond thing works nicely here! hahaha.
4. Continue to plan my big 2010 USA roadtrip. Route 66 here I come!!

:( I miss sourdough bread and tacos late at night. oh and frozen yogurt. (I must be getting hungry)

damn fuckin' tasty!

I've been seeing this commercial a lot lately...

There's one not far from my house...maybe I should check it out?

So I went to Delft twice this weekend. Once at night and once during the day, two totally different scenes but both pretty siq (siq = sick = cool). It's a "cute" town and definitely one of the many places I would like to take my mom when she comes. Delft is home to the original Delft blue pottery (Delftware) as well as the birth place of Johannes Vermeer who painted the Girl With the Pearl Earring (currently at the Mauritshuis in Den Haag)...just a little history lesson for ya!



I stayed in Den Haag Friday night at Lauren's NICE house (!!) so that we could get an early start on the MC Escher museum as well as lots of shopping...I bought a dress :) The museum was amazing. It's not normal for me to really enjoy a museum. I mean, I like going, looking at everything and then leaving. But this time was different. His art is soooo interesting, I just wanted to stand there and inspect (I can't think of a better word) each piece.


H&M's going crazy I tell you, CRAZY!


That last picture leads me to the topic of shopping. Last week I set out on a small quest for a few items I needed. Let's see...nutritional yeast, vital wheat gluten, garbanzo beans, pure vanilla extract, baking soda, sour dough starter. Well, it didn't go too well. I went down to my favorite store, Gimsel (closest thing to Whole Foods I'm gonna get). The dude tried to help me find the wheat gluten and then just told me I should use wheat flower...not gonna work for seitan buddy. I couldn't even bring myself to ask him about nutritional yeast, I'm sure he would have thought I was a lunatic. The only thing I ended up finding were the garbanzo beans :(

On a more positive and hopefully more interesting note, I went to see Tower of Power with Ineke on Thursday. She had warned me that it was gonna be a mostly older crowed but I actually really enjoyed myself. These guys know how to keep you interested (like Escher) instead of totally bored.



And then there's this...

Sign Language...

So Friday evening, while I was around the corner at one of the many Turkish markets in our neighborhood trying to find a cucumber (which apparently they don't have) Robbert called and told Caroline *something*. "But what did he say, which restaurant are we going to, when?" Caroline LOVES going out for drinks or dinner or anything really so she was REALLY excited telling me "tonight tonight we dinner out at restaurant tonight now" Keep in mind, she knows SOME English words but uses sign language too...

What kind of restaurant??

...we ended up going to some fancy French/Italian place.

Tonight Ineke and I saw two films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The first was a French film called Maman est chez le Coiffeur. If you know me, you know that I don't do well with movies. I usually either fall asleep or get up 2 or 3 times to go to the bathroom and fidget the whole time, but this movie kept me pretty interested with no need for sleep or anything else. It was a pretty slow story about a French Canadian family in the 60's going through some tough family crap. The second film was Slumdog Millionaire. I LOVED it...not only was the story good but it showed some really awesome (but at times sad) scenes of India. I want to read the book now. hmmm I wonder if Selexyz Donner (6 floor huge bookstore) has it in English...I'll check tomorrow. Everyone should go see it...now! Two more things- we got Surinamese (my first time) food between the movies...yummy! and Ineke bought me an official festival dress...I'll try to take picture of it tomorrow.

Friday night I went to Den Haag again with Lauren and all her cool super nice friends.

Looks like someone stole my camera...


Today I stared my "diet". With the only rule being, don't eat a whole bunch of crap. I was eating nutella with bread for breakfast, nutella through out the day, and then usually again on some kind of fruit at night. I CAN'T DO THAT ANYMORE. I was good most of today, healthy cereal and yogurt for breakfast, sorta healthy sandwich for lunch, banana, and then dinner, oh yeah...and then an ice cream and like 40 m&ms!! Tomorrow will be better!

Happy Birthday Juan!