La vie est belle

From hookers and hash in Amsterdam (Ma, I didn't participate in such activities - no worries) to enticing all our senses in the City of Lights and Love in Paris to one of the world's most famous vineyard regions - Bordeaux. That's what made up our first week in a nutshell. But who cares for nutshells?! So let me give u the nut part of our trip...

Btw, I haven't been blogging for two main reasons:
1. The keyboards in Europe are different - they're not English keyboards (i.e. the letters are in different spots), which makes it really hard to type.
2. There is no time.

Then why am I blogging now u ask? Again, two reasons:
1. I have use of someone's comp - while the keyboard is different, it has english keyboard capability AND I'm not paying for my time.
2. I am slightly injured. (Ma, don't worry!!!) I cut my foot on broken glass when we went out last night, and now it's swollen. Megs - my travel buddy - and Aristo - our couch surfing host - have gone to la pharmacie to buy me antiseptics and stuff... and I'm just gonna do as God said and rest, cuz concequently it's Sunday and also the 7th day of our trip (it's really not... but I was trying to make it work with my God line - fail). .....We're doing a wine tour tom that's interactive - we get to harvest some grapes, cuz it's harvest season - and I want my foot to be better for that esp since its for most of the day.

Soooo.. what should I talk about first....?!?!? More like what is my mother thinking right now - and what should I be answering first so that she's not freaking out as much... :)

Our couch surfing experience... So we're couch surfing in Bordeaux - btw Bordeaux was not planned... we were supposed to go to Sweden to visit a friend of mine, but last minute tickets ended up being suppperrrr expensive and the train ride was 19 hours with all the connections... so we decided to the South of France instead - anyway, back to couch surfing... basically people offer up their couches for you to sleep on|live on.... and the host gets reviewed by people who are part of the couch surfing network... basically, theres a way for everyone to get validated... It sounds really sketchy, i know... and I was really apprehensive at first, but the guy that we're staying with is alright. He's a law student and goes to university here.... and he made us dinner last night which was really nice - a buckwheat crepe (I forget what the dish is called in French) with stuff - it's apparently a traditional dish from the north, which is where he's from. Annnnddd... we met up with other couch surfer hosts last night ... they were much older but they took us out and hooked us up.. which was great - we got to meet so many locals.

This trip is really about being open to anything (no worries Flo - I'm still careful so as to not get TAKEN ha) and its really worked out so far... especially here cuz its only Megs and I. O, btw, I've been practicing my French... which is another advantage of hanging out with the locals cuz it forces me to speak the language. Initially, it was a bit of a struggle - especially in Paris cuz everyone looks so snobby - and cuz I haven't spoken since I was in Quebec... and mainly cuz Megan is fluent in French... so I don't bother speaking at all i.e. when we ask for directions, buy tickets etc. But one day Melisa - a friend who was with us in Amsterdam and Paris - and I split from Megs to do our own thing... and that's when I had to bust out my francaisssss cuz the Parisians are so much more receptive to tourists that way.

Anyway, what else?!?! O.. my backpack! It's 25 pounds aka heavy... but it turned out to be the best investment - acutually we made a better investment, that I shall tell you about later - but yea, Melisa brought along one of those big luggage thingys that you have to pull and let me tell you about her struggglllessss... 1. The cobble stones in Amsterdam proved to be a bit troublesome 2. The stairs were hell.. there seem to be stairs everywhereeeee (no wonder Europeans have such nice legs!).. so lugging that thing up them was not fun 3. When you're running late for a train, its much easier to speed walk slash (I don't know what key the slash button is :S) run with a backpack especially when weaving through hoards of toursists! as was done in Amsterdam.. yes Ma, I know that we should always go early.. but that was an unavoidable situation as we had gone on a bike tour through the country that morning - we biked 17 km btw *bows - and ...

Why don't I just tell you about our biking experiences in a bit more detail...
In Amsterdam, there are as many bicycles as there are people... and everyone bikes... they have full out biking lanes and all... Soooo Megs (who is a superstar in every way and so open to everything in life) and I rented bikes for a day - now these aren't your regular bicycles, these are Dutch bicycles... meaning they have back pedal breaks (not regular hand breaks) and the handle bar is closer ... so it was a bit of a mission getting used to it... and especially starting up cuz we couldn't reset the pedals... this proved to be tres sucke as I caused bike traffic jams when the lights turned green for the first little bit... and signalling and stuff was madness cuz really there are bikes and people all over the place and bikes drive everywhere... its quite disorganized really.. anyway i got into a bike crash... and it wasn't in the tourist area.. so I was super embarrased... In my defense it wasn't my fault... someone totally cut me off and turned rite in front of me ... and I t-boned him... :S ... but he was Dutch... and therefore, quite cute... so it wasn't so bad.. :)

Speaking of Dutch people, they are so doll like aka beautiful. Amsterdam is like Wonderland - an amusement park in the sense that its so surreal. The red light district is surreal. The drugs are surreal. And the Dutch people are like the candy shops.

Getting back to biking, all I really wanted to say is that we went on a bike tour of the country the next day and we biked 17km. Then we had to rush our tour guide to get us back for 1:30 so that we could catch our train at 2:15 - luckily we were the only people on the tour so it worked out. We biked so fast I thought my legs were going to fall off. And then we did Amazing race like and ran through the streets of Amsterdam to get to our hostel to get our packs and run to the train station.

Speaking of hostels, they're great. Get to meet so many other travellers - most of them are from Europe. In Amsterdam, we were in a room of 8 and it was like a mini family for those 8 days. It was really cute.

Paris was good. It really entices the senses.

Anyway, I have to end off now. Aristo needs his comp back.

Until our next city....
xoxo
KC