Sweet Spots

Hello wonderful family and friends! I'm back for another weekly installment. Last week marked the conclusion of session 1. My final paper, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was due last Thursday. However, Tuesday is what this paragraph will focus on. Tuesday was the Feist show in Portsmouth, which is a good two hour train ride from Brighton. Noah and the Whale opened for Feist and although I thought they were a pretty decent lot, I found it supremely annoying that they were sitting down during their entire performance. It came across as lazy and inconsiderate for their audience, especially for the vertically challenged ones like myself. But again, I did enjoy their music just fine, but it just prolonged the wait until Feist was to perform.


The show was amazing and it was great to see her in a small setting again. Feist is becoming extremely popular in North America as well as around the world and many of her L.A. shows are set in larger venues. Feist revealed that this was her visit to Portsmouth, which explained to me the size of the venue. Her set was energetic, passionate, and overall wonderful! After the show, our group decided to wait for her since we had to spend the night at the train station. The last train was scheduled to leave sometime around 10 in the evening and show normally don't end until after 11. We did get to meet her and she was wonderful. I knew she was a tiny person, but actually talking to her face to face and being able to look at her eye level made me realize how short she really was. She was about my height with short heels! Anyway, she introduced herself to all of us with a handshake and a "Hi, I'm Leslie." Of course we knew who she was! Leslie was very gracious and I hope to see her again soon!

On Thursday, a group of us got together and decided to have a nice picnic in the park. Gaby, Jennifer, Tyler, and I headed over to Sainsbury first to pick up a few items and then met up with Ulanda and Sam at the park. A few minutes later, Stella and Vy showed up with homemade goodies.

Strongbow is a cider that I enjoy very much. Four 2 liter bottles was a bit too much for a group of girls because Tyler decided to buy 2 of his own.

After our stomachs were content, I brought out my Uno cards and we played a few rounds.

Friday night, we took a coach into Amsterdam. Last weekend, we took the Eurostar to France, but since we booked the Amsterdam trip through Discovery Tours (and they are really loyal to their coaches, plus its cheaper) we had to take the Eurotunnel, which is obviously a tunnel that passes through the English Channel, but the tunnel holds coaches, cars and RVs and is put in an even bigger box! It might sound confusing, but it's really not. Perhaps I'm just really poor at explaining things for the moment. We arrived in Amsterdam Saturday afternoon. This next picture was located in the flower market.

We were informed by our very funny tour guide, Simon, that Amsterdam has a very large Asian population. I thought that was very surprising! We ended up eating at an Indonesian restaurant. I've never had Indonesian food before let alone seen a restaurant dedicated solely to that food. Gaby and I enjoyed a special little muffin before our lunch.

After lunch, Gaby and I stuck around the Indonesian restaurant while Stella and Jennifer went shopping. Our wonderful waitress, Mel, recommended a coffeeshop with really good rates (ahem ahem) so we purchased the goods and went back to the Indonesian restaurant to give her some company since she was the only one working the front of the house. In addition to her services (it's not like that, if you really want to know what I mean, email me) she gave us each a couple glasses of wine on the house! Gaby took the picture, it's a tad bit off. :)

When we left the Indonesian restaurant, Gaby and I hung out in the square for a bit partaking in local festivities, then headed off to the Sex Museum to meet up with Jennifer and Stella. The museum itself was not worth my 3 pounds and I was a bit underwhelmed. Don't worry, I didn't take pictures of the contents inside the museum.

Apparently, a lot of people in Amsterdam love to bike!

Later on that night, after we finally checked into our ho[s]tel, our group headed into the red light district. I did not enjoy it and I assume a lot of the girls on our same tour felt the same. I just felt so dirty walking through the streets. It is definitely something for the lads to enjoy, but I honestly felt embarassed and disgusted for the women working. I know I should respect their profession, but it's so difficult to find respect when you're in skimpy lingerie, dancing and attempting to lure customers through a window for all the world to see. For obvious reasons, I did not take pictures. Actually, I think one isn't allowed to take pictures of the girls in the windows. The girls and I decided we had enough after a couple of blocks and decided to consume some brownies instead. We left the coffeeshop and hung out on some steps in front of a closed store until the coach arrived. Of course, that time "hanging out" was accompanied with more local festivities.

The next morning we headed off to Zaanse Schaans, which is a typical Dutch village. There was also a cheese factory as well as several windmills! I loved the windmills and took a few pictures, but I chose only to post one for the reader's sake.

The cheese demonstration. After the cheese lady said her little speech, it was off to the free samples!

Zaanse Schaans concluded our trip into Amsterdam. Next, we headed off to Belgium into a city called Bruges. Bruges is a beautiful medieval city filled with Belgian waffles, chocolate and Kwak!

Behold, the wonder that is known as Kwak. Kwak is just a Belgian beer served in quite an unconventional apparatus.

I bought some cheese from Zaanse Schaans to eat while I continued my studies in England.

I also bought some Belgian chocolate!

Amsterdam was quite the experience. It wasn't as large as I thought it would be. A weekend is definitely enough to soak in the culture unless you really enjoy the local customs. The food was great however, oh did I mention that I had some Tibetan food as well? Although it didn't really seem that much different to me than other Asian cuisine. It was tasty though, I must say. I was a bit sad that I didn't bring some brownies back with me seeing that no one searched our bus. Oh well. My trip to Amsterdam can be summed up with a few lyrics of Regina Spektor's song Düsseldorf:

"In Amsterdam I got quite crazy

Might have been all the tulips and canals

Or it might have been all that hash"

Next weekend is London again and I can't wait! Abbey Road here I come!

P.S. I just wanted to thank those who have sent me wonderful things in the mail so far. A hug and thanks goes out to Ate, JC and Aaron. Thanks for the care packages guys!