Vacation, all I ever wanted (pt. 1)

Well. I gotta say, this vacation was completely insane. Sometimes, you just can't write the shit that happens to me.

First day, December 27. After getting all of my affairs in order the previous day, I woke up around 7 and met Matt at the metro at 8. We were heading over to Gallieni bus terminal to catch a lovely 8 hour bus to Amsterdam (37 euro, can't beat it). Except that somehow, I got some TOTALLY WRONG directions to the bus stop. We couldn't find this street name so we looked on a community map and found it. Except that it was a DIFFERENT Jules Ferry (I later confirmed this). So we were lost. And not close to the bus station. And we missed it. There was lots of screaming and panic, which I'm sure the locals found very amusing. In the end, we made it to Gallieni, albeit over an hour late. I explained to the ticket agent that we missed our bus. He said the next available bus was leaving at 11 pm, which would deliver us to Amstel station at 7 am the next morning. I may have said "Fuck that," out loud. So I asked about stand by. Naturally, he put me on the list. How French -- it's all there as long as you can see through your stress-induced fog and be a little more pushy. We couldn't get on the next bus because only one ticket was left over in the end, but we did get on the 1:30 pm bus. After I was molested and nearly crushed in the stand-by line. All of these people had bought stand-by tickets but weren't on any list, and they just kept pushing me more and more against the ticket window. I felt kinda bad for the agent, except not because we wasn't so nice to me either. So after 3 hours of watching Gossip Girl on the floor of this bus station, Matt and I got the hell outta there and rolled our way to Amsterdam. Interesting bus ride. Mostly because there was a family of 5 sitting next to us, one member of which was 2 years old and car sick. Good thing he was so little, cuz I wouldn't have tolerated vomiting from anyone else.
Around 9:30 we landed (so to speak). I had spoken with our hostel (who had to move us to their other location, which was actually nicer so whatever) to get directions, so we set off on a metro and a tram, then arrived. Checked in, changed, went down to the Leide splein and bought two space cakes and a joint. That's right. After all of the crap that we went through, the easiest part of the day was buying drugs. The Dutch have it all figured out. So I ate my chocolate space cake, drank some Dr. Pepper (WHICH THEY SELL IN THE NETHERLANDS! What is wrong with France), and got stoned for the first time. Basically I was just immobilized, I dunno if I'd ever do it again.
The next day we slept in, bought some fatty, fried, cream-filled pastries from a street vendor, and went to the Anne Frank house. Gotta do something civilized, right? The last time I was there, I was 13, and I used their little interactive program as a base for a class I taught on tolerance (for a Girl Scout thing - don't ask). Anyway, they have a new one now, and it's not nearly as cool. You still get to vote on these little issues and news clippings, but the one from back then was visually and content-wise just much more moving. That night we ventured out to the Red Light District, and actually found some prostitutes! When I went with my mom we were just on the wrong track but this time, there they were -- sitting in the windows, red lights illuminated. We also got some pizza and BOMB WAFFLES. In my travels I've discovered that I love seeing what each city's street food is like. In Paris, it's crepes and paninis and shawarma. In Amsterdam, it was shawarma again (like everywhere I've seen), pizza, hot dog-things, and waffles. But the waffles were all dipped in chocolate and covered in something excellent. I got one with milk chocolate and these crunchy, chocolatey candies all over. Heavenly. That night we went to bed rather early because we had to catch a plane to London at 9:30 in the morning. But overall, Amsterdam was a nice kick-off to the trip, and more fun and beautiful than I remembered. I will be back.

Stay tuned for the next installment. By far, the most interesting.