Epic Day 2

1) visited Anne Franke house.
2) visited diamond factory.
3) took canal cruise.
4) [here comes the epic part] myself and a few other students separated from the main group to duck into a supermarket and buy some Speculoos, mmmmm. We agreed to be quick and run to catch up with the others by the Dam (cathedral). We were, and we ran, but the large group was not where they said they’d be. As I walked the square to find the rest of the group, the students who were with me stopped to watch a juggler. Upon my return from not finding the rest of the group the following happened:
a) one of my students was selected to assist the juggler
b) he snapped a whip near her face.
c) he made several funny, slightly off color, full of innuendo jokes
d) for his finale he swallowed a sword then juggled a torch, a large knife and a baton then had my student pull the sword from his mouth.
5) After the juggler we decided to walk to the Red Light district, just to say we had, and ran into the tour leader who said everyone had 30 minutes to wander/shop around, so we wandered down to the Red Light district and saw some, uh, interesting stuff.
6) we rounded the corner from the interesting stuff and saw a condom store, complete with unrolled samples in the window.
7) we stepped into a gift shop and one of my students found penis shaped salt and pepper shakers.

To recap: my student assisted a sword swallowing juggler, we visited the Red Light district and saw a condom store, then found penis shaped salt and pepper shakers.

Did I mention the kids who were with me were all girls?

I’m so fired.

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Long Ass Days

Woke at 6:00 a.m. June 18, to meet the group going to Europe and head to the airport to catch a flight at 1:55. Checked in for the flight and 13 of our 22 were put on standby…all of us got on 🙂
Arrived in Amsterdam 9:15 a.m. June 19, and we’re picked up by our tour guide and whisked off to the hotel, where we dropped off our luggage and got on a train to Centraal station. We zombie walked through the Rijksmuseum, and the streets of Amsterdam.

I saw this: (Which sells British and American food)

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Which had this in the window:

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(Sugary foods and BBQ sauce! HELL YEAH!

Didn’t eat one of these:

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And we had Dutch pancakes for dinner and got back to the hotel around 8:00 p.m. Yep, up for about 30 hours, with maybe an hours sleep. Hopefully, my next post will be a bit more coherent.

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Adventuring in California – Wandering Monterey

For the last, um, five years give or take a year I’ve come down to Monterey to run the Big Sur Half Marathon. After picking up my bib # I decided to wander around a bit. I headed over to browse an antique mall near Cannery Row in which I was intrigued and perplexed by this:

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The tag said it was plaster and hand painted; that didn’t make it less odd. What was it for? I pondered. Who’d make this and why? And do they think someone will buy it again? Man, that’s just too weird.
Then I saw this:

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Ok, this one I can kind of understand, I’ve seen masks like this before, it may actually be purchaseable (BTW I’m aware that isn’t a word). I averted my gaze from the monster mask only to be startled by this:

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What kind of antique mall is this?!
The kind that displays things like this:

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Really?
Yep:

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Sometimes they come in threes:

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And sometimes they come with a body:

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And other times with clothes:

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I dunno, maybe my browsing radar was just stuck on odd, no, no wait, here’s the cold hard truth; people like weird and creepy shit.

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See?

Categories: Geography, Original post, photography, Running | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Netherlands Post Visit – Fini

Alas I have run out of pictures to share from the Netherlands so this will be my last post until I venture abroad again; hopefully in the near future.  I will be continuing to post on my other blog http://geowoodward.wordpress.com/ which has photos from my adventures in California.  I’ll leave you with a few of my favorites from the Netherlands.

One of my favorite ventures was to the ‘Heineken Experience’, not just because 3 beers were included with the admission price, and there was a horse that shared my name, but because it was  a great place to people watch and I got to personalize an actual bottle of Heineken. The end of the factory tour is set up like a club, disco lights, loud music and table games so people are behaving as if they’re in a club.  One guy in particular caught my attention because he was having his wife circulate around the room collecting all the unfinished beers and pouring them into his glass.  Yep, he was getting hammered.  I happened to be leaving the factory at the same time they were and they were trying to collect their free gift, which could only be collected by visiting the factory store in a different part of town.  Heineken provides a boat from the factory to the store but the last boat of the day had just left; Mr. Hammered had difficulty understanding this, I felt bad for the employee that had to try and help him understand.

Categories: Amsterdam, beer, Geography, netherlands, photography, Travel, Utrecht | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netherlands Post Visit – Utrecht

Just a few photos taken as I wandered the streets of Utrecht.

Categories: Geography, netherlands, Travel, Utrecht | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Netherlands Post Visit – Neighborhood Park

One day while visiting my brother we took his girls to a local park that had some awesome play structures, critters to pet, and some, uh, art.  I was amazed at the number of people in the park, I mean it was a weekday evening; the parks in my hood aren’t nearly as full, but to be honest they’re lame.  None of the parks near me have these cool things to pet

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nor informational pigs

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or interesting…uh…art

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For some reason these statues made me think of this

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Netherlands Post Visit – Urban Critters

While wandering around Utrecht and Amsterdam I enjoyed occasionally coming across  the occasional urban critter.

Categories: Amsterdam, netherlands, Original post, Pets, photography, Travel, Utrecht | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Netherlands Post Visit – Architecture

Initially walking around Utrecht and Amsterdam I felt like I was in some sort of amusement park. The architecture just kind of had the look of being a little too storybook, if you know what I mean.  Then I was told why they appeared that way.  One reason is that the windows on many Dutch buildings are designed to get smaller as the building gets higher giving the illusion that the structures are taller than they actually are.  Another reason is that Dutch staircases tend to be rater steep and narrow making it difficult to heft furniture up to the top floors.  So the buildings lean outward slightly and many homes have a beam hanging from the top over the street with a pulley at the end to hoist heavy things into the house.  Clever, but it messes with your head a little if you’re not used to it.

Categories: Amsterdam, netherlands, Original post, photography, Travel, Utrecht | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netherlands Post Visit – Canals

What recounting of a trip to the Netherlands would be complete without mentioning canals?

I have some photos from adventuring in California on my main blog for anyone interested http://geowoodward.wordpress.com/

Categories: Amsterdam, anne frank, Geography, netherlands, Original post, photography, Travel, Utrecht | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netherlands Post Visit – Cafe Culture

Why don’t we have a cafe culture in the U.S.?  Sure there’s a bar culture and a coffee shop culture, but it’s not the same as the cafe culture in many European countries. Cafe culture is just so casual, and relaxing. It is so enjoyable to have a seat, preferably outside, order a beer with some snacks or lunch, and lazily watch the world go by.

Categories: beer, food, Geography, netherlands, Original post, photography, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , | 4 Comments

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