Today I am participating in Where in the World Wednesdays, Classy in Philadelphia’s awesome weekly series. In honor of this past weekend’s World Cup match featuring Spain and the Netherlands, two of my favorite places in the world, I’m going to feature both today. I’m sad that the Netherlands lost, but glad Spain, an equally deserving team, won! These will just be pictures with brief descriptions, no time today for a real post!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

We will start in Amsterdam…

Bikes and canals...the epitome of Amsterdam!

The Red Light District at night

This is the guy I was traveling with. He was having a REALLY bad trip off a special brownie and this was day two of babysitting him.

I love Amsterdam. Seriously.

This is the Anne Frank Huis, one of the best museums I've ever been to. So powerful. DO NOT MISS THIS if you go to Amsterdam!

And moving onto Spain…

I discovered the wonders of siestas, hammocks and wine in the middle of the day in Seville.

Seville was magical

Loved the little streets with beautiful architecture everywhere you went in Seville

Nerja: only the most beautiful, relaxing place on earth.

I hiked out to an abandonned monastery while I was in Granada. The scenery was so beautiful and the monastery was awesome!

View out over the city of Granada from the Alhambra

The Alhambra at sunset. Gorgeous!

Barcelona was amazing. La Boqueria along Las Ramblas was a great market where I got fresh fruit smoothies daily.

I hate to say it, but the touristy attraction at the Placa Espanya, a fountain light show with music, was really fun to go see!

Park Guell, designed by Gaudi, was one of the highlights from my trip to BCN!

Today I am participating in Where in the World Wednesdays, Classy in Philadelphia’s awesome weekly series. This week, we’re in Paris, France! (Ironically, I also have updated my header to a more travel themed one. See above!)

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

My last week in Europe was spent in Paris and I could not have chosen a better place. I absolutely fell in love with this city, with it’s energy, it’s people and it’s beautiful architecture. Not to mention the language which is oh so sexy.

I arrived in Paris after spending the night on an overnight bus from Barcelona that made a border check around 2 in the morning. We had to take all our bags off the bus and it was exhausting. Not to mention I was on edge the entire night, having almost had my DSLR stolen at the bus stop and being harrassed by a few different guys on the bus. It was a long night.

When we arrived in Paris, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know the metro, I didn’t even know what hostel I was staying at, not having booked anything the day before. Luckily I had struck up conversation with a French woman on the bus and she took it upon her generous self to help me get to where I needed to go. We chatted quite a bit, which was a little difficult considering she spoke no English and I knew only a handful of French words. It was a lot of sign language and using my ability to understand bits and pieces of French that we managed to converse. When I got out of the metro I made the mistake of miscalculating how far it was to my hostel so I ended up grabbing a taxi. A very fancy taxi. I rolled up to my hostel in style, with the taxi driver helping me out of the car and bringing my bags inside for me.

The best part about Paris was that I had a bunch of friends, both from traveling and from home, there at the same time. It was the perfect way to end my trip. I met Russell, the guy who played the nasty prank on me in Scotland and whom I traveled with through several different countries, at the Eiffel Tower on the first day. I remember coming up off of the Metro, looking around and not being able to see the Tower. I was confused, since I was pretty damn sure it was tall and that I should be able to see it. I called him on my little European cell phone and he said to walk towards the horse.

I rounded the corner, took one look left and got so incredibly giddy, I almost CRIED. Holy shit, I WAS IN PARIS.

The first couple days were a little cold and a bit rainy, but that didn’t stop me from going out wandering the magical streets. I saw the Eiffel Tower, a particular obsession of mine, at least once a day. I would wander by the Seine in the evening, looking at the tower glowing yellow, sometimes sparkling on the hour and be filled with this wonder. With this amazement. I was in Paris!! I had dreamed of this city since I was young.

I ate dinners and had crepes with my friend Chandani who I knew through my best friend in New York, who was studying there. It was awesome to see people from home there, especially since I had been away three months. I spent afternoons wandering around town with Russell, checking our email at the Mac store and sitting in those massage chairs in random shopping malls. I was continuing my poor man’s diet of baguettes and crepes with nutella et banane but that would change as soon as my friend Steph arrived in town.

At the second hostel I stayed at, which was much closer and within walking distance of the tower, I met a few new friends. On the morning my friend Stephanie was due to arrive from New York, my new friend Kate and I made an early morning dash to the Louvre to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa. We sprinted through the large corridors and galleries so that we could see the painting without mass crowds. We walked in the room and my first reaction was, “That’s it? She’s so…small.”

Luckily, we beat the crowds. Unluckily, that was the afternoon that I tried my first Royale with Cheese. It was just as bad as everything else McDonalds and I regretted it for hours afterwards. Maybe even days.

At least I ate it with a pretty view…

Steph arrived that afternoon and after picking her up from the Metro and stashing her stuff at the hostel, we set out on our whirlwind weekend adventure. We had escargo at a little hole in the wall restaurant near the hostel, drank wine in the gardens of Versailles, tried on goofy hats from Bon Champs and drank champagne and ate delicious creme brulee overlooking the tower. We had crepes at the Sacre Couer and bought artwork in Montematre. We ate fancy chocolate and shopped along the Champs Elysees. We walked along the Seine and ate at fancy restaurants. Lucky enough for us, the Christmas markets opened the last weekend I was there and I tried delicious hot wine, scoped out chocolate bananas and felt the Christmas spirit all around.

Paris was incredible. On the second to last night there, I headed up to the top of the Tower after meeting up with Russell to have cotton candy (pictured above, larger than my head). It was something I could not miss. I was a little sad that I was the only single person there, that everyone was coupled off and making out all over the Tower, but it was so magical looking out over the city sparkling in the cold air. I did not want to leave.

Russell met us on our last afternoon there, before I had to leave for the bus station to catch my last overnight bus to London. It was a sad moment, the realization that my trip to Europe was over. That my last night in Europe was going to be spent crossing the English Channel confined in a bus. That I was leaving on a morning flight out of Heathrow to JFK.

As the bus pulled away from the station and Paris faded off into the blackness, I believe a lone tear fell from my cheek. I was so happy to have experienced all that I did in those three months but reality was waiting for me and I did not want to return.

I loved Paris. Every single thing about it. I cannot wait to go back!

Steph and I outside Sacre Couer

Le Tour d’Eiffel. In the Fall. <3

Today I am participating in Where in the World Wednesdays, Classy in Philadelphia‘s awesome weekly series. I’ve been a little slow to participate, but you can see the two posts I did a few months back. Now here’s a description from the Classy Jessica herself: The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

That is me celebrating the fact that I had successfully climbed to the very top of Preikestolen, aka Pulpit’s Rock right outside Stavanger, Norway. It was definitely worthy of a celebration–Wait, wait, wait a minute. What the hell is Preikestolen, you may ask. Let me tell you about it.

See that rock up there? The one with all the people, with the fantastic views of a fjord, with the incredibly tiny path to get to it? That is Preikestolen, or Pulpit’s Rock. That is what I climbed two hours to see. It was absulutely breathtaking and beautiful but getting there was painful. See, my brother told me that I HAD to take this hike, that it was one of the most beautiful things I would ever see. Like all of my brother’s advice, you should never take it. One time he told me there was a green ski slope open half way up Whiteface mountain. There wasn’t. I had to walk down that mountain, CRYING. Yet I forgot about this when he said YOU MUST GO TO PREIKESTOLEN !!! and signed right up.

I had no idea what I was in store for.

I had arrived the night before after taking an all night train to the north of Denmark from Copenhagen. I had been harrassed by an eighteen year old and a 60+ year old man at 5am, had spent eleven or more hours on a ferry and had arrived to find out I was not in Stavanger, but outside of Stavanger, with no way of getting there. I was quickly introduced to how amazingly friendly the Norwegians were. A girl who I had been talking to the entire boat ride mentioned to her friend that I needed a ride and these two strangers who I had just briefly met, offered to give me a ride to the place I was staying at (a fellow blogger, in fact!). I was beyond indebted to these two strangers and instantly knew I would love this place.

And love it I did. Stavanger was gorgeous and my host was very gracious and helpful (I didn’t get to meet Lisa, the blogger who helped me out, but I did get to meet her nice husband!).

When I wandered into town, I found out that the hike to Preikestolen took about eight hours total, which kind of surprised me. I wasn’t expecting anything lengthy so I immediately set out to catch the ferry to catch the bus to get to the base of this hike. On the bus ride up into the mountains, I met Zsofia, a Hungarian architect and we instantly bonded over stories of travel and our shared profession. I still hadn’t a clue what I was getting into but luckily Zsofia was there.

At the base of the hike.

It was painful. It was lots of steep hills covered in boulders that lead to amazing vista points that took my breathe away. It was rivers cascading down the walkways, slips and a fall or two. It was spectacularly beautiful.

This all lead up to the this rock that juts out over this fjord. You could see for miles from up here and it was terrifying and fabulous at the same time. Unfortunately to get to this rock you had to cross over this little ledge no wider than the width of my small foot. One false step and you would end up falling down 15 feet to a small ledge and beyond that–the fjord. I’m terrified of heights. I mean TERRIFIED. This is where Zsofia really came in handy–she had to coach me across this little divide. It took a lot of convincing; I literally said something along the lines of ok I can see it from here! That’s good enough for me! I’ll start going back down….

She wasn’t hearing it. She got me across it (and back across too–which was harder!) and it was worth it to be on that rock.

For the record I don’t understand how people can just hang off the ledge or lie that close. I am trembling just looking at them. It looks like I photoshopped them in right? I did not. That is the edge of this rock, that is how high up we were.

I highly recommend this to anyone who ends up in that area of the world–but just be prepared. I saw girls scrambling over rocks in high heels. I don’t know how they didn’t break all their bones. I managed to hurt my knee and my legs hurt for days afterwards. The hike back down was a race for time. We wanted to catch one of the last buses out of there but being that it was so steep and I was being extremely cautious, we almost didn’t make it. But we did, somehow. And it was one of the most memorable moments of my trip through Europe.

I was looking all sorts of hot but I needed proof that I made it back down alive. (I was pretty convinced I was dead)

In honor of St. Patty’s Day I’m going to tell you a little story.

It may or may not have absolutely nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day, or even St. Patrick himself. (Hard to believe I don’t know him personally, right?)

I have red hair, pale skin and green eyes. You can probably guess that I’m Irish. The truth is, I am a tiny little fraction Irish, I just managed to look most like what my Irish ancestors probably looked like, instead of the Sicilian-German mix I mostly am. (Bitter? Me? NEVER.) Anyhow. I said I had a story and it’s not about how I wish the dark, Sicilian genes had maybe gotten mixed up in my DNA a little bit.

Almost ten years ago I went to Ireland for the first time, also my first trip to Europe. I was newly eighteen, which meant I could drink legally there. I happened to be going with my family though so thoughts of getting drunk with all the cute irish boys were quickly squashed. That doesn’t mean my father didn’t take me out, get me drunk, then challenge me to some intellectual conversation–because he totally did. Twice. All the while laughing at me while he ordered me another pint.

We spent the majority of this vacation in what we called the Moon Mobile, a tiny, goofy-looking car that barely kept us from flying over the edges of mountain passes. We traveled all over the country side, visiting castles, pubs, cute little towns and conversing with the locals through the drivers side window as we passed within inches of their car on the tiny little roads. I took endless amounts of pictures  of the vast velvety green-ness, all the sheep and even pigeons–just because they were Irish. I was in love with the country; it was so beautiful, both the landscapes and the people.

Towards the end of our trip we ended up in County Clare, where my great-grandmother immigrated from. Once there, we got out of our moon mobile and started hopping electric fences to get to old graveyards, determined to find some long lost dead relatives. We nearly got charged by a bull (it may have been my hair that triggered it), almost got electrocuted, and I stepped on more graves than I ever care to again. Despite all that, we never did find any. We eventually rolled up into this town, and were kind of surprised. My mom had no idea that her grandma was from this cute little town on the ocean, with cliffs and greenery everywhere. She had never spoke about where she came from.

My great-uncle, whom you may remember from Christmas, had been to Ireland before and had–supposedly–found the house she grew up in. He even took a picture of it and so nicely gave it to us so we could find it again. Seeing that the town was minuscule, we figured we wouldn’t have a hard time finding it.

We circled through once, but no luck. Circled twice, looking a little harder. Still no house. We circled AGAIN. What the fuck, Great Uncle? This house didn’t exist. So we started asking people where the O’Brien house was.

“Martin O’Brien? He had a thing for the drink, eh?”

No one knew where he lived, but apparently he was well known for his alcoholism, even to people who had never actually met him. (Martin was my great-great-grandfather) We heard this over and over again, to the point where we started finishing people’s sentences and they’d just grin and nod knowingly at us.

We were about to give up when we passed this man who had to have been older than dirt on the side of the road. We figure he must know, he probably was the oldest member of this town by a good 30 years.

This man had to have been at least 100 years old. HE would know where this is.

Now, to make this story great, you have to know some backstory on my Great Great Grandfather, Martin. You see, he was a whiskey barrel maker, hence the immense liking he took for alcohol. He was also a poet. One poem even got published and my entire family knows all about it. Unfortunately, I don’t know how the poem goes and couldn’t find it in a google search, but I’ll sum it up for you. It was during the potato famine and in this particular poem, he spoke of how he cut down his neighbors oak tree for fire wood. Not very nice of him to cut down someone else’s tree, but he probably was drunk. And hungry. And cold.

Anyway. So there’s that poem, which is published somewhere and which makes us all believe we’re just a little bit famous and entitled…to something. To being more Irish than the next person, I guess.

So we stop the car, approach this old man who literally had snot encrusted on his nose, who was practically blind AND deaf and was older than anyone I’d ever met in my life. After a few tries of yelling my G-G-Grandpa’s name into his ear he finally gets it and you can see the lightbulb go off.

Ah. MARTY. (he snarled. We just looked at each other, he apparently didn’t like Marty too much but apparently knew him personally since he used his nickname!)

That bastard chopped down my tree.

Our mouths hit the floor. HE WAS THE GUY! THAT WAS HIS TREE! THE POEM! RAINBOWS! UNICORNS!

He talked a little bit about him and how he was still a little bitter about the chopping of the tree incident but he did indeed know where the home was. It was located in a field, just around the corner.

We pulled into the driveway, with this new-ish looking house and asked the guy standing outside where the O’Brien house was. He pointed to a pile of rocks in the backyard that resembled something of a foundation. Something that used to be a house.

Which made a ton more sense than the clapboard house my Great uncle had shown us.

We gathered that he had no luck finding the house and had turned to the pub and a few pints of Guinness. Once there, he probably told the locals about his woes, and them feeling bad for him, got him even more drunk and took him out somewhere and showed him a random house.

That’s the only explanation we could come up with as to why he sent us a bright blue, one story house when the house really was a pile of gray stones sitting in the middle of a field.

It’s Wednesday and I am taking part in Classy in Philadelphia’s Where in the World Wednesday series!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

Three and a half years ago I took my first trip to Mainland Europe (I had been to Ireland before). My brother was backpacking his way across Europe for 9 weeks, much like my latest adventure, and he was in Italy when I came over to visit him. It was my first time staying in hostels, first time doing any sort of budget travel.

We started the trip in Sorrento, a gorgeous seaside town near Naples. I highly recommend visiting it. Located about 4 hours south of there was this place called Paestum. It has the oldest Greek ruins in Italy and we had to take the perilous bus ride out there. We went along the Amalfi Coast and while it was raining, I absolutely loved it. It was so beautiful. We had to make several bus transfers and on the last leg we met a Canadian couple who also were staying in Sorrento and ended up traveling around with us the rest of the day.

Paestum was awesome:

On the way back we ran into a bit of traffic and missed our connecting bus in Salerno. The bus we missed was the last bus to Sorrento. So there we were, 3 hours away from where we were staying and being faced with the reality that we may be sleeping in a church or on a street somewhere. Instead, we started hitch hiking.

Initially we had problems. We just couldn’t get anyone to stop for the four of us. So me and the girl, whose name escapes me right now, stood out by the road while her husband and my brother hid in a doorway. Immediately a man stops for us and before we got in, our sidekicks jumped in. Obviously he was hoping he was going to get lucky with two lonely girls but was not happy at all when he realized we weren’t alone. He drove us to Positano but refused to speak to us, even to my Italian-speaking brother.

In Positano we were faced with the reality that a) it was raining and b) there were no cars going by. We stood out in the rain for an hour and a half, taking turns dancing in the middle of the road. That picture up there is from my turn out in the road.

Here’s her husband and my brother:

My brother had to buy food since we hadn’t eaten dinner and he needed to eat every hour.

We eventually got a ride from an off-duty limo driver who was very chatty. We encountered one problem with him though: he hated Americans. Luckily, when asked where we were from, the Canadians answered first. He growled about how glad he was we weren’t Americans and all of a sudden me and my brother are all oh yeah we’re from Toronto…. I had to listen to him bash Americans for an hour and a half the whole way back. But we made it and to top off the night, we had hot chocolate.

Except its European hot chocolate which meant MELTED CHOCOLATE. So thick.

Looking back at the pictures from this trip I cannot get over how YOUNG both my brother and I look. I barely even recognize myself. Is that bad? I now also really want to go back to Italy. I had so much fun! I’m sure these aren’t the last pictures you’ll see from that trip…

It’s Wednesday and I have decided to take part in Classy in Philadelphia‘s Where in the World Wednesday series!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

Your eyes are not mistaking you, those really are bones that I’m surrounded by. In October of 2008 I went to the Czech Republic, mainly to Prague, for a few days while visiting my brother in Germany. I had heard about this Ossuary in Kutna Hora, about half an hour away from Prague and just had to go. It’s interior is made up entirely of human bones. Human bones that were all dug up and left on the grounds of the church in medieval times. Whoever was morbid enough to design a chandelier out of every bone in the human body needed to have his head checked.

One more picture, for a clearer shot of all the creepiness…

That’s a HUGE shield made of, you know, bones. TOTALLY NORMAL.If you look closely there’s a bone-bird picking out the eye of the skull.

Tell me how this is religious?

Anyway, it’s creepy as fuck, especially in person, so I highly recommend going if you are in Prague. (And you should DEFINITELY go to Prague!) The town is also very cute. If that makes you feel any better about visiting a place made out of bones.

So you’ve heard about my traumatizing experience at the Moroccan Hammam. You’ve heard how I had to be all sorts of naked and scrubbed down by an equally naked woman with the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen. Got that allll covered. So now we can move on to the time I stayed with a nudist stoner.

So I’m in southern Spain, its like two weeks until I have to leave Europe and I decide last minute that I need to have one last beach holiday. My Rick Steves’ book tells me about this one little beach town that’s a hidden gem and it’s decided: I’m going there. (Sorry, name of town is hidden for the protection of the innocent. Or not so innocent. Whatever.)

I take one look at the two 40 year old couch surfers the town has to offer and decide a hostel is the better way to go. I find this ridiculously cheap hostel that has great reviews and decide to give it a try. Even though they give no address or directions to the hostel. Just that I have to call when I get there. Sketchy? YES. But all these people had given good reviews so I was going to risk it.

I’m picked up by this American guy who I find out owns the unmarked hostel where I am lead to. I also find out I’m the only one staying there and I’m starting to picture me being the star of my very own horror movie (for the second time this trip!) but the guy seems relatively normal and we start joking around pretty quickly so I figure I’m okay. As soon as I’m upstairs and settled into my own room, he pulls out the pot. And I’m all oh that’s pretty awesome. So he gives me a hit, I go out and see the town and its gorgeous and I’m on cloud nine because I’m in the most fucking beautiful place in the world and there’s free pot.

That night we sit and chat about everything; we smoke up, we drink beers, we smoke up some more and listen to Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia Band and Bob Marley. He ends up being pretty hilarious with a thing for imitating accents and making fun of EVERYONE. (his impersonation of Bush and Obama had me on the floor) Total stoner but I was high too so I didn’t really care. Free pot! What’s not to love?

Plus he was pretty good looking.

What? Don’t look at me like that.

He started telling me about his underwear parties that he’d throw at the hostel when there was a bunch of girls and guys here. The girls would wear their underwear, and the guys would go completely nude. Sounded pretty awesome to me. I’d be down for that. I mean, this was the new me, I didn’t care about being naked anymore.

So the next morning I come downstairs and there he is, shirtless this time (which I totally didn’t mind) and smoking up. Offered me a hit which I declined due to the early hour and I headed down to the german pastry shop he’d recommended to have some fabulous struedel and to go sit on the beach. I’d go back every once in a while to the hostel and would hang out with my new stoner friend and got high throughout the afternoon. He’d kind of been hinting that he’s a little bit of a nudist and didn’t like wearing clothing. Talked about how if I wanted to sunbathe on the roof naked, I could. New me apparently still cared about being naked. At least in front of guys. I didn’t participate in that.

Blah blah blah day was awesome, fabulous sunset, go back to the hostel, make some dinner and sit down with him in the common area and start smoking up and drinking more beers. All of a sudden HE’S NAKED.

He was not kidding when he said he didn’t like clothing.

I did my best not to stare. Remember how he was good looking? It applied everywhere, lets just say.

He totally knew I was attempting not to stare so he would joke around and I would turn a few shades of red and stop looking at me like that.

I survived the first night of him naked and somehow, SOMEHOW, while both of us were high and drunk and him being very very naked, nothing happened. The next morning I come downstairs and oh HES STILL NAKED! Way too early in the morning for that kind of surprise but I do my best. I go out to the beach, lie out, and come back. We wind up on the roof terrace, me in my bikini and him….you know…naked. After a couple awkward moments that involves him staring at my boobs and then apologizing for it, we start talking about sex. We’d been talking about it before but at that point at least *I* was fully clothed.

I’m feeling more comfortable that there is a very attractive, very tan, very fit naked man in my presence that I’m not sleeping with, when all of a sudden he says “Umm…well I wouldn’t look over here. I’m kind of…happy.” Oh dear Jebus.

So what do I do? I look over. He laughs at me and then he asks me if I’ve ever seen an uncircumcised one. No, I had not. He managed to get my head to turn BACK in his direction and oh THERE IT IS.

And he’s awful proud of himself that he was the first one I’d ever seen. And then we start talking about length and girth and HOLY SHIT I DESERVE A FUCKING OSCAR FOR THE PERFORMANCE I GAVE. The performance that involved NOTHING HAPPENING. Did I mention he had a good body? Ahem.

He had mentioned on a previous night that at one party he had all the girls sign his dick. I had to leave that day for the next city and as I’m leaving (and he’s still naked) he’s all well I’d give you a hug…then he laughed at the expression on my face. Then he says, “I don’t usually ask just anyone but since you’re pretty damn cool, do you want to sign it?”

I politely declined.

So I may still be somewhat of a prude, but I definitely am a lot more loosened up thanks to my experiences abroad. Thank you, Europe, Africa and the nudist stoner.

Now enjoy this no-puns-intended picture of that gorgeous town.

Best Place: A coffee shop? A pub? A retreat center? A cubicle? A nook?

Place: Coffee shop in Barcelona where I sat for hours on a daily basis, drinking cappuccinos which turned into glasses of wine, reading a book, having therapy sessions with The Messenger. I wasn’t bothered by the waitstaff to have more and I could just relax. Out of all the places I could choose from–the living room of the hostel on the Isle of Skye that felt so much like home with its fireplace and friendly people, the rooftop terrace of the hostel I stayed at in Sevilla where I could lie in hammocks with a glass of wine during my siestas–this one, this place, really stood out. Its my goal to find a place just like this to hang out in, wherever I end up.

This was hard. So hard, that I had to go onto facebook and look back at my pictures to remember if there was a particular moment in a restaurant that really stood out. Having spent the majority of the past year in New York City, you can imagine just how many restaurants I ate in. COUNTLESS. I ate out for lunch, ate out for at least 3-4 meals a week and then there were the brunches and the parties….

I’ve been to Nobu, Tao, Buddakan, Blue Water Grill, Republic, 230 Fifth, Stanton Social, Hudson Hotel…the list could go on.  Then I went in the opposite direction: I spent three months on a strict budget that only allowed eating baguettes and cheese so eating in restaurants was rare, let alone really nice ones.

I remember my first real meal about six weeks into the trip. I had just come off of the rainy season in Scotland and had been eating salami sandwiches religiously and some pretty bad soup when I could get my hands on it. I had gotten pretty used to not eating much of anything, especially nothing that had any great taste to it. When I arrived in Amsterdam I had been promised a free place to stay (which fell through) and I was hoping a free meal from the Messenger’s cousin. I was in luck on that front. I got that first nice meal in a fancy restaurant, despite being in the clothes I’d worn for a couple days and soaking wet hair from the rain outside.

That wasn’t the best meal though. The next morning I came over after his cousin had departed and I took a blissfully amazing hot shower and used the hair dryer for the first time since being in Europe (and let me tell you, that is probably the one thing I missed the most!). After getting ready, the Messenger mentions that he had a mouse in the room and it had gotten into his food.

Lightbulbs started going off. (after I freaked out, a little)

Having worked in a hotel I know how hard it is to deal with guests and how many people will milk the shit out of good customer service, just because they can. Well, folks, as poor travelers, we were milking it.

So we go downstairs and tell the receptionist about our little friend Mickey and somehow, after a lot of milking, we managed to get ourselves a free lunch in the same fancy restaurant.

We sat in the corner right by the window looking out over one of Amsterdam’s busy streets and shared croquettes and beef cacciatorre for appetizers and glasses of wine; I had sweet and sour chicken on a skewer and really amazing fries and the Messenger had a steak for the main course; for dessert, we shared the cheesecake. I was drooling over all this good food, my tastebuds almost couldn’t handle the excitement I was putting them through. Neither could my pants–I was ready to burst.

It was the perfect way to start my week in Amsterdam, a city I loved so much I pushed back a flight for.

The croquettes

My chicken skewers