Adventures from my Eurotrip: Paris and Amsterdam.

Good evening from Prague, where we have all gone well and truly mad from lack of sleep!

I'm currently 10 days into a three week long Interrailing journey around Europe with two of my very best friends, Hayleigh and Bethan. Originally I had every intention of keeping you all up to date with our travels by writing a new blog post every couple of days, but it turns out that trying to find a fully-functioning computer in a European hostel is as difficult as trying to find a space cake in Amsterdam (I'll circle back to that particular story later). The point is, I have a whole lot of drama and general madness to condense down into a reasonably-sized blog post so this one is just going to deal with our adventures in Paris and Amsterdam....and trust me, they are numerous.

It feels like years ago that we set off to Pairs with our big smiles and poorly packed bags that are too heavy to lift. Note to future self: bring less stuff!

The first ridiculous incident happened within half an hour of us getting off the plane. Bethan got trapped in one of the turnstiles in the Metro as she was trying to manoeuvre her enormous suitcase through. This, is turns out, was a sign of things to come.

Once we had successfully navigated the Metro (which was quite a challenging experience in itself what with us each dragging our 25KG suitcases behind us) we ended up walking half an hour through the busy streets of Paris in the complete opposite direction of our hostel. Thankfully a kindly Spanish man noticed us looking bewildered and exhausted on the street corner and attempted to give us directions. The issue was, the entire conversation took place in French, which none of us spoke particularly well...including the Spanish man. Needless to say, there was a lot of arm-waving and exaggerated facial expressions.
But by some miracle, we did eventually manage to locate our hostel, which, as it turns out, was slap bang in the middle of Chinatown. Now, I have nothing against noodles and those waving lucky cats, but it wasn't exactly the traditional Parisian experience I was expecting. For one thing, there was a distinct lack of onions and berets.

On the plus side, it turns out that, despite the fact that all three of us lack any sense of direction and are more easily distracted than most small children, we're actually quite efficient tourists. In a single day we pretended to be cultured in the Lourve (laughing at paintings of monkeys), searched for hunchbacks in Notre Dame, climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower to watch the sun set and ended the day by collapsing from sheer exhaustion under the Arc de Triumph. I'm not sure that's the recommended way of touring the city, but you can't argue with our productivity.

As we'd managed to condense three days worth of sight-seeing into a single manic day, we decided to leave Paris early and head to our next destination ahead of schedule. I, for one, was more than ready to leave the chaos of Paris with its angry commuters and overpriced Malibu. I'm not a city person. I'm not cosmopolitan enough. Besides, our next stop was the one we were all looking forward to the most - Amsterdam.

Our first port of call when we arrived in Amsterdam that evening was the Sex Museum. After all,
it would be rude to go all the way to Amsterdam and not have your picture taken with a giant penis. And, while the Sex Museum isn't exactly top of the list of Amsterdam's cultural experiences, it's a fun way to spend an hour if you enjoy things that are, quite frankly, bizarre.

All three of us were keen to have an early night after a long day of travelling so we opted to pop into a nearby bar called The Bulldog for a quick drink before heading back to the hostel. Ten Jager shots, three Jack and Cokes, some strange shots of whatever the national liquor of Holland is, and one rendition of Saturday Night (in a bar that had no dance floor) later, it was officially my 22nd birthday. As it turns out, it would be my best birthday ever!

The next morning, Hayleigh and I had a traditional breakfast of hot-dogs while Bethan wandered around clutching an emergency plastic bag in case of any post-party sickness. (A side note: this was not the last time this particular plastic bag made an appearance during this trip.)

After a quick look around the gift shops, we headed to the Amsterdam Dungeons. What an experience! There's nothing quite like being terrified out of your mind to help you get over a hangover. Hayleigh ended up being put 'on trial' and was sentenced to be burned at the stake for being a witch, dancing naked in Dam Square and praying for a man. I pointed out that after all the alcohol she'd consumed the night before, none of these accusations were out of the question.

Now, as promised, we circle back to the space cake incident. It wasn't so much an incident as it was an example of our general stupidity. We knew we couldn't leave Amsterdam without trying a special cake. I mean, it would be like going to Egypt and not visiting the pyramids! But, despite the fact that there's a coffee shop on every corner in Amsterdam, we picked the one place that didn't sell space cakes and inadvertently spent five euros on an overpriced chocolate muffin. And the muffin didn't even taste that good! What can I say? Clearly we used up all our efficiency in Paris.

All too quickly it was time to leave Amsterdam and haul our cases onto another train. Our parting memory of Amsterdam was of the man in charge of the luggage lockers in the train station, who could not conceive that we had somehow managed to lock our suitcases in the wrong lockers. After asking us whether we were drunk and shouting in Dutch for a while, he headed off to fix the situation, muttering, "Never in 40 years..." Thankfully, we did eventually get our cases back.

So that's just a brief overview of some of our strange wonderful adventures so far. And to my loved ones, please know that I am safe, well, more highly cultured than ever before, and may or may not be engaged to an American.

Until next time...

SaveSave