As with all good things, even this party of my summer adventure has to come to an end...sigh.
So I figured here's my last chance to go see a little more of this crazy country, so why not do a field trip to the see Haarlem and the North Sea? Yeah! Field trips! And seeing as Holland is the size of Central Park, it takes mere minutes to get anywhere. OK, maybe Holland's a little bigger than Central Park, since the train takes a whopping 30 minutes (which is how long it takes me to get into Manhattan)...
Anyway, welcome to Zandvoort aan Zee. Think of a cross between Jersey Shore and the English coast, without the boardwalk and carnival games and replacing those are pannekoekken and bungalos. Brown, crisp water, millions of cheesey restaraunts and bars, lounges to rent, and sand as far as the eye can see. And if you look off to the left, there are dunes. Not dunes like I think of, endless sand and windswept mounds...no, no, no, this is crazy beautiful (not that desert dunes aren't beautiful). Everything is covered in low plants and briars, which are chock full of rabbits, and it goes on forever. You can bike through it and apparently wind up in the Den Haag, or so the sign says, which is why I compared the Netherlands to a large park. If you can bike to another major city, it's a little strange to me.
Needless to say, the beach was so wonderful, the water was so nice to put our feet in (except where there were bunches of dead blue jelly fish the size of my head- for real not like the raspberries) that we never made it to Haarlem. But the train station looks nice from the tracks.
After a day in the sun, watching the sunset with a pitcher of sangria we returned to beautiful Amsterdam where we all had one last cocktail at a neighborhood bar, and as we were enjoying our last beer together, we all noticed the glowing red sign across the canal that read "LIVE SEX SHOW"...and we thought why not? I'd been in Amsterdam for 4 1/2 weeks, Liesl had been there for a year, Claudio had been there for almost 2 years (although he'd been to a peep show before), we figured we can't possibly leave Amsterdam without sampling the live sex shows!
It was horrible. Do not go to the Live Sex Show...for 25 Euro we got 2 drinks and I've watched algebra lectures that left me more turned on than that. Both group of boys that stipped down for me out of the blue we're sexier than that, at least they were funny. But I guess we had to do it. If I wasn't going to smoke, I had to support the seedier industries somehow.
And then I had to get up bright and early in the morning to catch a stupid early flight to London, where I continue my jet setting life style only with champagne instead of Belgian beer. Oh, it's good to be me.
Anyway, I love Amsterdam, I love the Netherlands, I miss everyone I've met, but I expect to see you all again in Brooklyn. It was awesome, I can't wait to go back, New Year's anyone? Or there's always next summer, maybe I can convince them to give me the residency again...gives me a little more time to work on my Dutch.
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