Weekend Roadtrip – Part Three
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
I knew it! We had no idea, with how uncomfortable sleeping in the car was, that we would sleep until 9:30. In a hurry, since we were already 2 hours late, we tried getting back to Omaha Beach to see it during the day. And of course we couldn’t find our way back. We drove around the French countryside for half an hour before finally giving up and heading to Mont St. Michele when we saw a sign pointing that way. No point in skipping that sign and wandering around for hours trying to make our way back there. On our way there, Keith told us about a little thing that happened earlier that day. I bought a couple 12 packs the previous night to drink at the beach, but there was no room in the back with everyone sleeping back there, we tried hiding the beer outside (where it was cold), but by the front of the car. Apparently Keith woke up in the middle of the night and saw a guy walking to the front of the car and reaching down. Thankfully Keith thought enough to lay on the horn and scared the hell out of the guy. I guess he jumped straight up and ran back to his car. I wish I had been awake to see that.
With Mont St. Michele being as big of a tourist attraction as what it is, we had no problem finding our way there. Signs were everywhere. When we got there, we had a pleasant surprise. Apparently it floods after 6:30pm where the make people park. And there were sheep just wandering around. I desperately wanted to chase them, but we had to get up to the abbey before noon. It closes from noon to 2. We spent the next hour and a half checking out the abbey and the area around it and bought a couple souvenirs. We left around 2 and headed towards Amsterdam. We had no problem getting through Belgium this time. We think it’s because we were in the Flemish part. Apparently they’re not a part of the evil entity designed to keep people there. The only issue was that we spent waaay to much time driving the back roads to avoid the tolls, so we didn’t get to Amsterdam until about midnight.
I’ve been to Amsterdam a couple times before, so I knew that the city center and Red Light District was close to the train station, so we tried desperately to make it there. Eventually we found the signs to the parking at the train station. Much to our disappointment, the parking for the train station was 4 levels of parking for bicycles, no cars. All that searching for nothing. We ended up parking about a mile and a half away from the center, over by Waterloopein.
We got to the RLD and walked around for a while. Found out what exactly was legal. Checked out some prostitutes and watched people negotiating. It was hilarious that Keith wouldn’t even look towards them at all. Walked around most of the time looking at the ground. What a prude. Julian and I were thinking about giving a hooker 50 Euros and tell her to pull him in. Explain that he’s going to fight, but he really wants her to get him in there and take advantage of him, but we decided against it. He could have ended up throwing a punch or something. Then after an unsuccessful attempt at finding the Absinthe Bar that was no longer in business, we headed back to our 1 star auto motel in the parking garage til the morning.
We ended up getting up relatively early (8am). Didn’t realize that nothing opens until 10-10:30, so we just walked around for a while. Julian found a sign for the Homo Monument, but we couldn’t find it. We eventually found a Coffee Shop so certain people could get what they wanted before heading back to the car to get back to Hamburg (after an hour of driving through Amsterdam in search of the highway).
Time to plan our next road trip. Auschwitz and Prague!!!
“Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.” – Samuel Butler, Erewhon
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