Paris to Brussels

The day of the conference is very long and boring, not helped by the fact that there is a star wars exhibition on(But closed on a monday), which tempts me with childhood enthusiasm to go up and sit in an X-wing:










It's away from the centre of paris, so gives me the opportunity to see another area, but generally it is a long day of meetings. We're even too tired to find a decent restaurant at night and eat somewhere near our hotel...... It's an early night before we get up early to drive to Brussels for a lunch meeting... It seems like less than a fortnight since I was last here.. Luckily we are soon out of Brussels and heading back to Amsterdam with Camp Freddy radio entertaining us..

We are almost across the border when we make a piss stop at what appears to be the most inbred service station:



My boss become obsessed with driving deeper into the surrounding villages in order to see either bestiality or incest..... but really just to have a break from the monotony of the motorway.....

Eventually we give up and get a map out to work out where we are, and how we get back to the motorway...


We are in Oostmalle. Now to someone who knows his belgian beers, a little dutch and rudimentary physics, its not to far a jump to guess that Westmallle is probably to the west of Oostmalle(Oost is dutch for east). Westmalle is a beer...... We are now driving west in search of a Brewery:



On our way to the brewery, we head into a supermarket. We now have a new hobby when heading home from Brussels; heading into flemish supermarkets to buy cheap belgian beer. After purchasing some beers and some glasses, it's off along the road to find the brewery:



Unfortunately, maybe due to the time of year, there is no obvious visitor centre. What I do notice is a sign for trappist abbey cycling routes......

We head back to the Motorway, and travel back to Amsterdam as my brain fires off on possible plans for adventure and mayhem on a Belgian beer cycling tour......
Hmmmm beer:

Steaks, beers, and light sabres

After a very well behaved early night last night, I have met my deadlines at work, so can catch up on the everyday stuff which lies under reams of paper on my desk. I left my Camera at the dinner last night, so I meet Miss Argentina for a coffee. It's good fun having a chinwag without alcohol, and makes a good relief from a very empty office.(Everyone is on holiday or at conferences). Coffee was at the closest bar to my work, Cafe Molenpad:



It's a great little bar. A lot of character, I've had a lot of good nights, afternoons, mornings, terrace sessions, beer sessions, coffee sessions and tea sessions here. It's a bar which is very good at multi tasking.

Tonight I'm triple booked. I had planned to have a Guitar Jam, but then I got offered Steak, Beers, and Pool with The Kiwi and the Pool lads. While it's not going to be the same level as Sunday's steak, so good relaxing conversation sounds like fun. Later in the afternoon, I get a phone call from one of my Bulgarian friends, He tells me that they are having a party at their new house. I can't pass this up as I want to see the new house and they are pretty good friends. I decide that I can reduce myself to double booked by getting a steak with the lads, and then heading to the party.

We meet at Coco's on Rembrandt plein:



It's an Australian theme bar which boasts warm beer and lousy food. The bar is popular with Australian and New Zealand ex-pats and it's full pints of cold beer, large portions of food and large screen football/rugby/cricket mean the English don't mind it either. We meet up with a Dutch colleague of The Kiwi's and have a pint here before heading off to one of the touristy Steak Restaurants on Rembrandtsbreestraat, It's an Italian steak restaurant. which is in the touristy area of Rembrandtsplein, so I don't expect much. When we go in, we have a little old Italian man who does the bad service act. It soon becomes clear that the bad service act is really just a clever ruse to hid the fact that the service is pretty bad. We ask for pints, half litres and he pretends he doesn't understand, we order them in several languages and he "Yeah, yeah, yeah's his way off to the kitchen. He comes back with Litres. It's just a trick to get more money out of tourists. Although the steak is pretty good, everything that surrounds it is cheap and crappy. Five portions of chips amounts to one larger than normal portion in the middle of the table, the steak sauces are packet mixes etc.

We have fun anyway, the conversation is pretty good. We even get onto discussing the differences between the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt" and the Nine Inch Nails original. An expression of pain or a very good tune. Johnny Cash takes away so much of the original's darkness, but you can see what a great song it is in terms of melody and structure when Johnny Cash does it. Basically Johnny Cash trades some of the pain and darkness to make the hooks of the song more obvious.

By the time the bill comes the table is so full of empty plates that the waiter hands it to us on a tray. The Dutch guy is the only one with free hands, but is hesitating on being handed the bill in case he has to pay it all. One of the English guys notice this and a says "C'mon at least hold it - it's only a piece of paper". This is in reference to the Dutch being tight.

We head off for a quick game of Pool. A few cheeky doubles and some nice long pots mean that I can still hold my head high in a Pool hall. After a few games I have to get going to get to the Party.

The party is in Diemen-Zuid which is south-east of Amsterdam. It's about a 20 minute bike ride away. I should probably take the tram, but living in Amsterdam you never really want to be away from your bike. It keeps your options open for getting home. It's quite exciting getting out of the centre. Going to a suburb, to a real house. I'm greeted at the door by their very excited kid. He insists on running around the house and showing me everything before I'm allowed to speak to anyone. By Amsterdam standards the house is Huge!!! There's three floors and three bedrooms. It's hard for people to understand this excitement when you haven't lived in Amsterdam, but Amsterdam living is very cramped. Houses are small, and Amsterdammers are experts in making the most of small spaces. So being in a house with so much space feels great. The garden is a good size as well. To give an idea of size, it's big enough and dark enough that if you wanted to you could hide in he bush and wait till people pass and jump out with a light sabre, you could.





The kids are playing with Light Sabres in the garden. They decide that I should be Darth Vader, cos he loses his legs. It's funny watching kids worship Ewan MacGreggor in the same way I used to run around the school playground pretending we were Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. The difference is the toys, we used to just imagine we were holding light sabres(Or hold sticks if we were outside the playground), whereas no kids have things with lights that vibrate. I explain that Darth vader has a heavy dry breathing because he is thirsty and that he needs a beer. While Obi Wan MacGreggor goes to the fridge, I go and say hello to my bulgarian friends and introduce myself to people I haven't met.

I've arrived quite late, so the party's winding up, but it was good to see this set of friends, some of who will be in Bulgaria next week. The new house has a great feeling, and theres a garden. I look forward to Barbecues here next summer(I think the good weather is finished for this year.)

I really enjoy my night time cycle through the countryside - no cars, just me and MellonCollie and the infinite sadness:

The boys(And girls) are back in town: Day 3

.............And we're up. Day three in the big brother household and Mr. Blue needs an espresso.

Today we have no parties. No commitments. No schedules. I could stay in bed and not miss anythinga part from the girls last day, but I'm on auto pilot now and I'm up and raring to go. We decide to have a slow morning. We watch some DVD's and then it's off into town for a wander - we toy with the idea of going to a museum(The weather is pretty grotty), but instead decide that given the price and business of the Van Gogh museum and the closedness of the Rijksmuseum, we'll get as much out of looking round the shop.





Nina manages to buy some antique stamps for her postcards, and then we are off to find a canal boat tour.

Canal boat tours are one of the most touristy things available to do in Amsterdam, but like a bus tour, it;s a great way to see a lot of the city in a short time. It's also a good Sunday activity. Very Lazy:



All the canal boats take a similar route. They travel round part of the three ring canals until they get to central station and then go out in the harbour for a little while before going back into the canals. You get to see canal houses:



The harbour



Nemo Science Centre



The old replica ship at the Maritime(Scheepvaart) Museum:






The boat ride is good fun. In her effort to spread happiness around the world, Nina befriends a little girl who's on holiday with her dad. The girl's from Kentucky, so has a jen-yoo-ine southern accent. When we get off the canal boat they exchange photos and addresses.

We go off for a coffee and meet a few of my mates before we head back to the flat to catch our breath before dinner. When we get back to the flat, The Kiwi has returned from London. He's had a similar "weekend on the piss" as he calls it, so although the flat has become far more female in his absence, he fits into the pace perfectly.



This is the shortest beautifying session so far. Before the girls arrived Nina told me that her and Diddley often went for pampering weekends and that she very quickly undid all the girlie things straight after like a dog rolling in a puddle after it's bath. I told Diddley this story, so the girls have been arguing over who is the most high maintenance ever since. It would appear that Nina takes longest to get ready.

Tonight I want to show the girls something special for their last night, so I take them to a very good French Restaurant called Bistro Bonjour.

It's a French restaurant run by a Turkish family, and they do some of the most amazing steak's I've ever tasted. I't's one of those places that has such a nice Atmosphere and the food is so good that you can't help but laugh and joke and have great conversation. I always associate French food with good conversation. Tearing Good bread, quaffing good wine, gobbling down steak so tender you could eat it through a straw. The Kiwi and the girls fit well together. We laugh and joke together, and unsurprisingly end up rattling off Billy Connolly jokes. It's a such a great relaxing night - not a care in the world except good red wine, good steak and listening to good jokes. It's a great end to a great weekend.

There were many other paths the weekend could have taken, it was very spontaneous. We hardly stopped for breath, but managed to cover all the bases - from tourist pursuits, to local parties and restaurants which are a little off the beaten track. I hope to get to Prague before the end of the year to visit a mate and envision that I can get the same mix of seeing the tourist end of things while also getting off the beaten track to small local places.

I'm blown away by how wonderful the weekend was, and I look to similar in the future, the excitement of not knowing what will happen on those weekends.....

The weekend ain't over yet tho. We have an early night and are back at the flat for about 1am in order to get up early for the girls plane. The chosen DVD is.......... Star wars - what an end to a great weekend!!!!!!