Formal Dinners suck.

    I woke up 3 am today.  Since I fell asleep with my pants on, I took a full bath.  Bad idea…I was freezing.  So naturally, I woke up Mikki to do the same.

    Four hours later, Dad calls.  As the only early riser in the room, I pick up the phone, mumble a yes, then promptly go back to sleep.  I woke up once more when Dad banged the door.  By this time, the boat was tee-toeing due to the waves.  Stumbling, I managed to locate the light and let him in.

    Somehow I ended up being the last of my sisters to get ready.  We had breakfast—the dulce de leche spread was delish.

    We boarded a mini-bus to Rome, to meet the rest of Dad's partners and for the Siguion Reyna pictorial.  Mom and us three walked around aimlessly for a bit, got on each other's nerves (Mom and me in particular), and generally had no idea what to do.

Bus pics


Coliseum

    We holed up in the Metro, wondering what hell we'd do until three.  Dad's pictorial ended early, so he came to see us, along with Tito Beatle.  With his help, we took the bus to the Fountain of Trevi.  It didn't stop right in the front though, so we had to walk a bit.  And guess who I saw walking up the street?

Owen! 0_o  My teammate in UP.

    Owen and her siblings were walking around Rome too.  I had a flashback to two years ago, when I saw Anna Lo in the Vatican.  (All roads lead to Rome, eh?)  This was much better, however.  It turned out that Dad knew Owen's father—Popoy Ricalde—who used to be in Dad's firm.  They were going to go on board Costa Romantica too!  What a happy, cool coincidence.

    Fontana dei Trevi.  As it turned out, only Risa had three Filipino coins.  We had to use a couple of Euros.

Trevi

Some exploring

The ship at port

The bridge

   

And in my opinion, the best picture 'evah'.

    Dammit.  I was held up at the checkpoint AGAIN?  I think the security lady copped a feel.  I feel so violated.  This time, it was apparently because of my boots.
Do I look THAT much like a terrorist?  Really.

    Anyway, back to my account of yesterday.

    April 9, 2006

    So we went on a city tour.  To be honest with you I didn't absorb as much as I wanted to, partly because our guide was talking too rapidly (and most of it in Spanish).

    There was the Royal Palace, where the Royal Dutch Family used to live before relocating (to where?).  Their biggest Chinese eatery was a floating restaurant that could seat nearly a thousand diners.  There were windmills.  There were warehouses.

    And of course, there were museums.  I really wanted to go to the Sex Museum near our hotel (Hotel Ibis) and the torture museum that Risa visited when she came here with CISV.  But alas, there was no time and my family is rather stodgy when it comes to the topic of sex.  Some of the museums we passed by were the Museum of Science and Technology, the Tropical Museum, the Museum de la Resistance (dedicated to staunch Dutch patriotism), the Museum of Modern Art and the Joods Historich (Jewish History Museum).

    One thing that the people seemed fond of repeating was that they were no longer a religious people.  The first driver said it, and the guide repeated it.  He boasted that they had so many churches that they didn't know what to do with them.  Somewhere in Holland, a church was converted into a supermarket.  In Amsterdam, we passed by a church converted into a hotel, a hotel formerly a prison, and a floating barge that served as a school, due to the lack of space on land.

   

Fun Amsterdam facts: most of the city is situated below sea level.  40% of the households here are made up of only one person, which underscores the population drop (from 900,000 to 700,00 people).  Though there are some 30,000 students who reside in the University Quarter, they're not considered as citizens since they leave on the weekends.

    Oi.  What a nerd, eh?  Maybe I shouldn't mention that a man-made forest was constructed in the 1600s or whatsits just to relieve the employment rate.  Or they build a memorial in place of the 1928 Olympic Stadium that they had destroyed—turned out that it was the first full stadium that the Games played in.  Whoops, I just said it.

    They're completely mad about the Olympics, by the way.  There's an Olympic quarter, street, village...which is odd.  Their government didn't PAY for the stadium (something that had to do with Sunday woek ethics.  Shrug).   The citizens had to go door-to-door to donate money for it.

    All in all, the city was very ok.  It wasn't completely spectacular, but there were a few 'ooh' moments.  The East Gate was a less cool version of the Arc de Triumph, but still noteworthy.  There were sculpted (in an abstract way) bridges and artsy 70s-style deco balconies that added funk to otherwise dull apartment areas.

    We only made two stops.  The first was in the suburbs.  Pretty windmills.  Duckies.  Sheep.  It looked very 'countryside farm', despite being only a minute away from the city proper.  The second stop was in a diamond-polishing center.  I got annoyed (ha, ha).  As usual, the parents didn't listen to me, and we ended up with the Spanish group as the salespeople tried to get them to buy diamonds.  It was a bit like the tour from hell we got in Hong Kong, but with a little bit more class.

A farm

A duck

A windmill

Mom and Dad

Me

Dad and Risa

We went back to the Dam Square at 11:35.  It was time enough to have lunch, at a little convenience store that nonetheless sold decent sandwiches, sneak into another hotel to use their comfort rooms, and browse through a couple of stores.

    Man.  The kink here is out in plain sight!  Condoms are within reach of children.  The first souvenir shop I went to had an entire section devoted to bongs and cannabis (and pseudo-marijuana candy), and a refrigerator full of mushrooms.  I really wanted to buy the plushie penis. ;).  Edible body paints, gummy sex organs, candy undergarments…wow, some of my friends would've been in heaven! (You know who you are.)  I ended up buying penis bath gels for some April celebrants—payback.

Dam Monument

Mikki, at Dam Square

Ever industrious Daddy

Mama

Some really funky building

Funky egg-shaped taxi thing

Magic Shrooms

Karma

   
    Afterwards, we had to rush to catch our bus to the Keukenhoff (?) Gardens.  I was stuck with a couple of Ju clones, right down to the smugness and blatant filial abuse (I'm not that bad, am I?).  Luckily, when we switched buses they moved a couple of seats away.  All of us save Dad slept on the two-hour trip.

    When we got there, I was impressed.  Even if the Buchard Gardens in Vancouver were much more spectacular, the Gardens were still impressive.  I saw a field of gold—the tulips were like a brilliant sun, lying gently on the land.  A couple of artworks artfully scattered about kept the flowerbeds from looking too repetitive.  There were pig statues in a pen and giant wooden clogs.  The fountain in the center of the lake sprayed randomly.  After walking on the lake, attempting to jump in a well, climbing a windmill, and gratuitous camwhoring, my sisters and I espied a bridge…

Risa in Schiphol Airport  


The bus to Amsterdam

    After one day in Amsterdam, we're leaving.
    I have been remiss in journaling.  Yesterday was okay.  Once again, we have missed mass.  Whoops.
    Okay.  At ten in the morning yesterday, we set out for a city tour.  The translator was pretty amazing—he would switch from Spanish to English to Dutch with no effort whatsoever.  My own Spanish isn't nearly as good.  Anyway, we got to see all of Amsterdam (save of course the less savory places like the red light district and the slums).
    More later.