“Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world” Gustave Flaubert
The last night of our cruise we had drinks and a wonderful dinner. We also had a game night of trivia with the theme of cinema; Alex and I couldn’t resist. While the rest of our shipmates bound together making large groups of six, eight or in one case twelve people to pool their thoughts we remained the underdog as a crew of two! We packed into the lounge and got set up with our sheets and picked out team names. While the old ones of us went with cocky names like “The champions” or “The Trivia Masters” we went with a modest name, “The Defeatables”. So, the game started and we were afraid it would be maybe European films of really old movies playing to the crowd and we thus would perform poorly. Turns out we were in our jam and we were nailing all the questions… all except for one group of the questions. The trivia was broken into about five parts and one part was stupid, this was the part we did poorly on. In the end of the game we found ourself placed firmly in third place! Down by only three questions with the two teams ahead of us ending in a tie. The teams below us were quite a few questions down, but they did their best, how embarxseing the cocky names must have seemed at that point. Anyway the two youngest people nailed the trivia against large groups and teams and we nailed every set of questions on the end which covered one of my favorite films, “Signing in the Rain”. In the morning we slept in the longest we could, it wasn’t much as we had to be up no later than nine am to get some food. In the morning as we came out of our room the ships dynamic had definitely changed. The once slow moving vibe of our retirement ship had drifted away and a bustle had replaced it as everyone was in frantic mode to get everything cleaned and turned over for the next group of tourist. We ate our breakfast and were able to leave our bags under the studious guard of the staff, a most reliable group. In killing time until we could check in at our set of new accommodations we went to the east side of Amsterdam and visited the Dutch Resistance Museum and then the city zoo that was built in the 1800’s.
The Dutch Resistance Museum, while small, was defiantly put together in an interesting way. It covered a very small area affected during the war but it was an area that I really never knew much about and that after leaving the museum we literally walked the streets and past buildings that were effected and highlighted. They had a special exhibit that focused on a group of artist that during the occupation firebombed the building that stored the records on the jewish population and records they used when tracking and shipping people to the work and concentration camps. You walked through this special exhibit following the steps that they took in coming to the decision, then the plans they made and carried out, through the capture of some of them, the trial execution and aftermath. In the museum we saw propaganda from both sides and many examples of forgeries of documentation and even examples and authentic spy watches and weapons among other things.
We walked out of the museum after we had our fill of morbid yet fascinating history and worked our way directly across the street to the Amsterdam Zoo! We still had a few hours to kill before we could head to the hotel and what better way to spend it than looking at cute little animals! A swell idea in any country. Following the GPS on our phone we ventured around the left side of the zoo into a parking lot, we realized our error and circled back, following the hordes of dutch children we figured would be heading to the main gate. We stood in line for a good twenty minutes before a less than enthusiastic ticket booth lady charged us an extra tourist fee, take a minute to let that sink in!, tourist fee, to gain entry. Once we were in we were transported to a different world. The zoo had one of the best layouts we had ever seen and personally took the cake of my favorite zoo. The winding paths and exhibits were surrounded by vegetation, gardens, statues and other beautiful and natural looking decoration. We wound our way around the entire zoo, taking our time at each exhibit and enjoying the lack of additional safety measures that would never cut the mustard back stateside. We saw a whole host of animals, including a black jaguar playing in the water with a plastic jug, a really noisy seal, and some awesome little monkeys. We spent some time sitting around the penguins (something neither of us can resist) and then headed around to take a gander at the elephants and giraffes. They were happy and in an exhibit much larger than most we’ve seen. After we got our fill of the animals we headed to the front of the zoo where there was a planetarium show was to start in a mere minutes from our arrival. We laid back in the air conditioned room and enjoyed ourselves as the announcer zoomed out of our line of sight and brought us out so far that the earth faded to a speck before fading out entirely. Being brought face to face with subtle differences between regions on earth we were made to feel even more removed and insignificant in the expanse of things while we learned about the size and vast emptiness of the universe. You know…. normal honeymoon stuff.
Filling our time and the clock now reading well past when we were due at the hotel for check in the zoo kept us more occupied then we thought. In honesty we could have spent the summer in the shade cast down by the trees smelling the flowers and chilled with the animals. We walked back to the harbor, collected our bags, and asked the receptionist to call us a cab and waved goodbye to our ship, until next time! We only had to wait about ten minutes and before our cab came ripping around the bend and screeched to a stop feet from us; our driver had shit to do. The cabby ripped through the city narrowly missing other motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians without prejudice each time our cabbie getting more upset with his living speed bumps. Despite the manic driver, we made it to the Raddison Bleu alive, even with the battle to pay with the card as he tried every cabbie trick he could to get cash out of me. After we checked in and put all of our stuff in the room we both collapsed onto the bed and began plotting our night. As it turns out we were too tired to do anything much the first night (having already knocked out a museum and a zoo) we did however find a little pizza place just up the street and decided to give it a try. After getting back I ended up making friends with the concierge who called out another hotel worker who vacations in Florida and so we all chatted and talked for more than an hour. They helped me picked out what tours and sights were worth seeing in the few days we had in between our chatting so by the time I got back to the room Alex said she was ready to call out a search party. The remainder of our night was spent picking tours and planning out our next few days fitting every minute to a plan keeping the momentum of our trip going. Hello Amsterdam, welcome to the Martin honeymoon!
Erroll & Alex's European Honeymoon Trip! 