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So, it's Wednesday now and I'm back in San Diego. But this entry is going to be about the rest of my Holland experience, and the super long journey home.
My Tuesday was 32-hours long. For those who complain they want more hours in their day: it's possible, but you're gonna have to spend a lot of it travelling. For me it was about 25 hours all up. And it looked something a little like this: train, plane, bus, plane, bus, train, car... home! (No nearly missed flights but emergency "EXIT" lights going on during our shaky descent to Heathrow added a bit of an adrenalin rush this time - I was freaking out!!) By the time I arrived at the train station near San Diego last night I was exhausted, and didn't have enough cash for a taxi, even if I had been able to get the number for one, and, even if I had both of those, I would have hated waiting around until it came, trying to keep my eyes open (sleeping four out of five nights without a bed to stretch out on really tires you out). So I was uber grateful for the guy who was headed in my direction and gave me a lift back, dropping me almost at my doorstep. Yay for random travel angels!
So, back to Holland:
Saturday evening we spent at Lara's house; possibly the greatest CouchSurf host ever, she'd given us the key to her apartment so we could come and go when we liked so even though she was out babysitting, we made ourselves at home and began to cook dinner. Then the power cut out. No power for the DVD meant an early night.
Sunday we trained out to Den Haag (which you have to make that "haacking" throat noise to say) and caught up with the lovely Martine. Walked into the info centre to ask directions to the hotel we were to meet her outside, and who should be at the desk but her! Took me a while to recognise her though; it's been a couple years.
Martine was fantastic: she showed us around the beach promenade and the pier, gave us Dutch lollies and biscuits, helped Rach with some advice on bikes, and posed in clogs with me in the photo you can see on the left (on "Blog" page).
Monday we said goodbye to our lovely host and checked into our hostel. Couchsurfing beats that hostel about a hundred times over: quiet, ventilated apartment outside of Amsterdam's centre, versus noisy, smoke-smelling hostel with drunken guys swearing or snoring or talking about how much they'd just vomited at early hours of the morning, in the red light district. (You can see Rach's similar impression at www.statraveljournals.com/kiwi_rach). It was pretty eye-opening, and sad to be there: sitting in the hostel lounge you could see a woman selling herself in the window of the building straight across from us, and there were all kinds of dodgy shops along the street. Really sad, cos Amsterdam's such a cute city, with its cobbled streets and historic buildings, it's sad to see that kind-of stuff amongst it. We wondered how the women ended up there. But that's a whole 'nother story and not the main point of this blog entry - feel free to share your thoughts on the message board though or talk to us.
Rain and generally gloomy weather kinda put a dampner on our plans for biking round the city so we chilled instead. Watched Sione's Wedding in the evening and laughed at the Kiwi jokes and the accent which we can now (I'm sorry to say) hear as an accent.
And Tuesday morning Rach said goodbye to me at the train station. There endeth my Netherlands experience. Was a crazy 6 day weekend, and I'm now left with a fair bit of study and sleep to catch up on, but it was worth it to hang out with my l'il sis.
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