When I got up in the morning, I went and got some breakfast, had another amazing, hot, long shower, and got on the road around noon. The drive back was really easy. My GPS worked like a charm. What a lifesaver that little contraption has been.
When I got back from paris, I dropped of my stuff and headed to the gym for my kickboxing class at 6PM. Which I was really looking forward to!! I can’t find my gloves and I’m fairly certain that I left them behind by accident after the last class. Bummer. I’ll keep looking for them but its not looking good. I borrowed some gloves which was really gross but oh well. I guess compared to riding around on the subways in paris for the past week it couldn’t be any worse. The class was fantastic as always.
After class, I went back home, made a quick dinner which consisted of heating up a frozen pre-prepared meal of potatoes chicken and broccoli, and then I took a shower and headed over to nel’s house to meet debby and matthew. Wow it is SO cold outside!! I actually see people skating on the little canals on the bikeride over. At 9PM at night. It must be about -5 or -10 degrees celcius.
So I get to nel’s house, give debby a big hug, and tell everyone a little about my paris trip etc. They start talking about going to Amsterdam tomorrow and whether they will stay overnight etc. etc. Mathew wants to take the train back. Debby wants to stay overnight. Nel says take the train back. Oh my gosh the tension. I can’t wait to get back home. Drama free zone. I tell them to talk amongst themselves and I will call them tomorrow morning after they’ve decided what they will do.
I called the next morning, and I guess they found a room that was in the guidebook for a reasonable price, so we will be staying overnight. I went and picked up debby and matthew, and we went up to Amsterdam for the day. We did the park n ride at the Olympic stadium which was a good idea in theory but the lot was full so we unfortunately had to wait for one car to come out for one car to go in. so about 30 mins later, we finally got into the lot, took the metro into the city, found our hotel, dropped off the bags, an off we went!!
Let me preface with this… its REALLY cold. It hasn’t been this cold consistently in NL for several years. I have my usual two jackets, hat and gloves. Poor debby has on about 6 layers plus her coat! There’s a ton of people out and about though, despite the cold. We got some coffee and a snack then headed over to the canal boat tours, which was #1 on matthew’s list. The boat tour was pretty cool. The boat was really low on the water with big windows so you could see everything really well. I sat with a nice dutch family, a mom dad and their son. The father was also in the civil engineering industry and has worked previously with Fugro. right in front of us were these two kids, maybe 12 years old, full on making out. I mean MAKING OUT. At first, I thought they were just killing time until the tour started. But no, the didn’t come up for air the ENTIRE 1-hour tour. It was amazing! We just had to laugh… what else can you do?? I thought... where are these kids parents? I can’t believe they paid 24 euro to make out for an hour on a boat! So when the tour ends, and we disembark, I see the two spit swapping culprits meet up with none other than the nice dutch family that I was sitting with!!! The two kids had been making out for an hour about 3 feet away from their parents. And the parents didn’t say anything!! So weird!!! Another weirdness, sitting across from debby was a little girl who was probably about 7 or 8 years old with her father. The girl had a pink pacifier permanently plugging her mouth (how do you like that alliteration??). apparently she was kicking debby the entire cruise. She looked like a little pro wrestler. She was probably 20 pounds overweight, which is a lot when you’re only 7. you’d think the pacifier would get in the way of excessive food consumption. so all in all, the canal boat cruise was a good way to see the city and a freakshow at the same time.
After the boat tour we did the obligatory sex museum, and got dinner at a cool little restaurant. We walked around for awhile, went through the red light district, then went back to the room around 8PM to take showers and get ready to go out. I played heads up poker with matthew while debby was getting ready. We were playing with dutch cards and I got confused which one was the Ace card and he ended up making a huge dent in my money. Oh well. We were only playing for 2 or 3 euro.
So we head out and the words of debby “Hutchins, you’re looking good”. Yeah, she’s right. We hop on the metro and head down to leidseplein to a bar I had been with dany when she was here. Figured it was a good spot to start the night. To make a long story short, it was a crappy night which concluded with matthew yelling at me at 2Am on the street while he stomped his feet and clapped his hands agressively at me. i was just so stunned. i was very upset after enduring my verbal lashing, so i parted ways with them the next morning. i was really sorry to see debby go, but i think it was for the best. i can't take thier drama!! Time to get back to having fun!
On Wednesday I headed back down to Delft and got ready for my race near Utrecht. It’s the Sylvester Cross run and it’s a really cool annual New Year’s Eve race. Its either a 3K, 6K, or 9K run (one loop is 3K). it starts and ends on the sand dunes, which is really tough to run on!! But in between is a rolling course through the woods. Beautiful course. Really nice run. I planned on doing the 9K, and if it had been one big loop, I’m sure I would have. But when I came around the second loop after the 6K, I decided to end it. it was just so cold. I got a cramp underneath my right ribcage around the 4th kilometer, but it was gone in about 10 minutes or so. I finished in almost exactly 36 minutes for 6 kilometers, which is on pace for 10km per hour. I’m pretty happy with that. I wish I had stuck it out for the 9k. oh well!! When I finished, they gave me an orange sports drink, and I took a big swig of it and it was so cold I got an ‘ice cream headache’, aka my sinuses froze. It was so cold outside even the sports drink was almost frozen. In the little goody bag they put in a really cool ceramic coaster or maybe it’s a little trivet for the stove I’m not sure. either way I really like it!
I got back to Delft around 6PM, took a shower, went out to find something to eat, which was REALLY hard. Everything was closed!! Grocery stores, restaurants, even fast food places like mcdonalds are closed. I finally just head back home and cooked some food I had there. Should’ve just done that in the first place I guess!! Around 9PM I went over to my friends house to light fireworks. I brought the bottle of champagne that Fugro had given me in the Christmas present box I got 2 weeks ago. I’ve been saving it!! sipping champagne and lighting fireworks was the perfect way to spend new years eve. Here, people stay at home until AFTER midnight, then go out to the bars. During the day, I’ve heard fireworks going off sporadically during the day. Between about 11PM and 1AM, its constant, as if every person in delft is lighting off fireworks continuously. Its amazing! Fireworks as far as you can see. Most of them are generic roman candle type or spinners etc. this is definitely one of the coolest new years eves that I’ve ever had. Everyone else went downtown around 1PM, but I went home. I was just tired! I guess I could have rallied, but it was so freaking cold outside I just couldn’t do it. the bike ride home was bad enough :)
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