Whereas in Mountain View, it would take me until 11:30 to get out of the house and bike in to work, we can’t seem to leave the house until some time after noon over here. The day is half-gone before we even get out the door; we’ve definitely go to work on that.
We had lunch at Greenwood’s today, a recommendation from a woman we recently met just outside our house at the Thai restaurant next door. You can get scones with jam and cream there, but I didn’t sample them on this first visit.
We then walked up to Centraal Station to buy a voordeelurenkaart for both of us. This will give us a 40% discount on Dutch trains for a whole year. Sarah has been nagging me to take her somewhere exciting before I return to California for a week to see Dead Can Dance later this month, so this was part of that plan. You need a voordeelurenkaart to be able to purchase and use a RailPlus card, which you can use to get 25% off international tickets.
Anyway, these turned out to be useless in combination with the Thalys train that we wanted to take to Paris, so we didn’t buy any of them. Instead, we just bought a couple of first class tickets to Paris for a train departing on Wednesday, the 14th. We’ll spend four nights in the French capital and return on Sunday, giving me just one day to run any errands before I hop on a plane back to San Francisco for the first of four Dead Can Dance concerts along the Californian coast.
I’ve travelled quite extensively, but I’ve rather surprisingly never actually been to France before, so that will add another country to my list. We got a good deal on the first class tickets, thanks to Eloïse. She travels for free, but rather unusually, her very presence reduces the price of our adult tickets. It’s strange, but we’re not complaining.
Anyway, we always said that we would start to travel around Europe when we got here, and Sarah is making me put my money where my mouth is. It’ll be fun to hurtle along the track at 300km per hour next week, making it to Paris in just four hours. One of the Thalys trains has WiFi on board, too, but sadly not the one we’ll be taking that day.
So now we have to read the Lonely Planet Paris book as soon as possible and try to remember our school French. It’ll be nice to get away for a few days and, in so doing, seal the first rather difficult chapter of our new life in Amsterdam. We’ve actually accomplished quite a lot in the last few weeks, even though it hasn’t really felt like it.
Eloïse will get to visit her third country, too; not bad for someone just about to turn four months old.
At the end of the afternoon, we rode our bikes down to the Vondelpark, which turned out to be absolutely packed with people: cyclists, skaters, people lying on the grass; everyone was having a good time.
After giving Sarah some time to practice on the bakfiets, we went to Café Vertigo, next to the Film Museum. This is inside the Vondelpark at a very scenic spot.
There wasn’t much space on the terrace, so we joined a woman and her eleven week old baby boy at their table. When we struck up a conversation with her, we realised we had a lot in common and hit it off really well. She has an Irish boyfriend and he joined us a little later. What was meant to be a quick drink turned into a meal and lasted a couple of hours. It was great to speak to some new people in more than a superficial way; it makes me realise just how much I’m missing our friends. Anyway, perhaps something lasting will come of this crossing of paths. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, leaving only when Eloïse started to become weary of her parents not having moved their arses for way too long.
The temperature was about 27°C today; very, very warm. It’s as if we’d never left California. If only it could continue for a few more weeks; then our friends and family could really see the city at its best when they visit.