Les secrets de la Ville de Lumiere

We’d had a fast and furious two weeks, and were dead exhausted. Still, since we had a few days left before we had to head back home, and I’m always up for seeing a new town, we decided to hit Amsterdam. Where better to relax and wind down for a couple days?

Amsterdam conjures up certain images - there’s the quaint houseboats and canals, of course, and the strange, sometimes crooked rowhouses with their hooks used for hauling up furniture (the doorways and halls being too narrow). There’s its storied history, and two world-class art museums. Of course, those kinds of images are usually secondary to its most famous low-culture quartet: beer, pot, hookers, and porn.

Those four are all well and good (and cheap - the one time we hit the coffee house I spent more on playing pinball than on weed), but what Amsterdam really should be famous for on a low-culture level is its amazing variety of greasy street food. For every red-light house, coffee shop, or bar there’s 10 kebab carts, pizza joints or French Fry stands. It makes sense - you’re never going to go broke trying to feed people cheap greasy food in the world’s #1 destination for drinking and smoking pot.

I hit the museums and walked around town, but the only tourist attraction we really went out of our way to see was the old Heineken Brewery. After coming back from South America, I had visited a friend in Atlanta, where the main tourist attraction was the “World of Coke,” admission 10 dollars. I shouldn’t have scoffed snobbily at the tourists lined up to get in: the brewery ended up being pretty much the equivalent Dutch tourist trap: the “Heineken Experience.” Well, at least we got three glasses of beer and a take-home glass with our admission.

We did manage to find a great bar though - centrally located, non-touristy, with a great selection of beer on tap (each of which came in its own unique glass). I highly recommend to all of you a night at Cafe Gollem - or an afternoon, as that’s when they have their microbrew sampler.

After Cafe Gollem, we couldn’t resist climbing one more thing in Europe. We headed up to the top of this church. It turned out that I had, in fact, climbed my namesake church - the Mozeshuis (or Moses House in English).

Notice the huge billboard on the outside of the church. A 50-foot tall fashion model gracing a house of God is pretty par for the course there. Amsterdam’s a weird place. Not just for their acceptance and embrace of the more tawdry side of life, but for the way they don’t seem to see any inherent conflict between it and their more highbrow culture. Perhaps this picture explains it best. There was one more interesting “got to love the Dutch” scene we found before we left: this mural of Johnny Rotten. Not really just for the mural though - but for where they thought it most appropriate to put it.

It was a fantastic trip. Despite a bit of an adventure transferring flights at Charles de Gaulle (the most dystopic airport I’ve ever been too - we all but ended up on the tarmac), the journey home was uneventful. Still, we weren’t sad, but exited. We had a great time exploring Paris as extreme tourists, but ultimately we were just that: tourists. Above, around, and below New York City, we’re at home.

When looking at flights to Europe, we noticed Iceland Air had the best deals - and you got a free stopover in Iceland to boot. “Who can turn that down?” we thought. Reykjavik seemed like a pretty cool place to spend a weekend, and the possibility of seeing the Northern Lights was too good to resist. Plus, Iceland just has a certain romantic appeal about it. The remote, windswept northern frontier and all of that.

Iceland basically turned out to be Europe at three times the price. When I got off the plane and saw that a cup of coffee cost the equivalent of 6 dollars, I knew we were in for trouble. Instead of seeing the sights and having fun, our goal quickly became trying to spend the least amount of money possible while there.

It was actually still dark when we got into Reykjavik, and the first thing we noticed was a big tower that was lit up in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of the Chrysler Building at night. This turned out to be the Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Reykjavik. It made for a good daytime vantage point from which to check out the town. For those of you planning on someday trying to visit Iceland without taking out a second mortgage, you can easily avoid the tower admission charge by just heading inside and taking the elevator immediately to your left. Nobody checks tickets. I think God understands.

That was pretty much the only sight we saw the first day - we wanted to go visit the Icelandic Phallological Museum, but it turned out that it had moved to another town in the north of the country.

Reykjavik itself basically resembles a small college town - and we were there on Saturday night. Drunken young Icelanders pretty much swarmed the downtown area. It was almost like Cancun Spring Break, except without the beach, sun or cheap booze (12 dollars for a draft beer was about par). Even the clothing wasn’t that different - we actually spotted more than a few tanktops and skirts.

We hit the bar and chatted with some locals - pretty much everyone in Iceland speaks flawless English, and usually pretty good Danish and German also. I asked about Hakarl, the Putrified Shark Meat that’s a traditional Icelandic dish, and was informed that it’s not really something people eat anymore, except while really drunk. Of course, seeing what I saw of Iceland, that should make it the most popular dish.

Since unfortunately the weather wasn’t right for seeing the Northern Lights while we were there, the next day we decided to splurge on an alternate tourist attraction, the Blue Lagoon. It was pretty interesting. You’re basically in two separate environments at once. Sit down, you’re in a (somewhat slimy) spa. Stand up, you’re naked in the middle of the Icelandic countryside in January. Fun times.

We left the Blue Lagoon at about 6:00 PM for our last night back in Reykjavik. We got lucky a couple of times before we had to leave at about 4:00 AM to catch our early-morniong flight to Paris. The first time was when we found an unsecured construction crane, letting us get a lovely nighttime view of the city (plus neither of us had ever climbed a construction crane before, so that was cool). The second time was when an American woman we met at the Blue Lagoon invited us to hang out at her hotel until we left, saving us both another night of accommodation. Hey, in a country where the Salvation Army hostel costs 35 bucks a night, it was definitely welcome.