My wife and I just got back from 11 days in Europe where we visited London, Paris and Amsterdam, The trip was great, and all three cities/countries were appealing in their own way. Frankly, even after nearly two weeks I was in no hurry to return home. But I do have a few questions and a few observations I would like to ask my international friends about.
1. WTF is up with those prices in London?!!! Man, how can you afford to live there? The prices would have been a bit on the expensive side even if they were dollars, but with the pound conversion I was paying $60 for meals I would have been happy paying $20 for anywhere here in the states, and this wasn’t even in the hottest tourist areas. I eventually found one pub in the West End, no less, with real English ales (brewed in house) for about $3.50 which was great. Up until now Georgetown (a part of Wash D.C.) was the most expensive place in the universe (land of the $7 Budweiser), but now it comes in second.
2. My experience with socialized medicine was great. I somehow managed to get a sinus infection early on in London (something about all the rain and cold I guess
- I didn’t go to Europe for the weather after all) and was able to find a local office in a row of apartments a few blocks from the hotel where the Doctor saw me without an appointment after only a 20 min wait. Prices for the visit and antibiotics were reasonable.
3. The tube is a bit steep (see point one) but easy, quick and efficient. No part of the London metropolitan area seemed more than 30 minutes away.
4. My wife noticed (of course not I
) that many of the women in London are tall and thin and look like models. WTG on the DNA front!
5. Bath and Stonehenge are great, The Tower of London is fantastic, and the Imperial War Museum is perhaps the best museum I have ever visited (also toured HMS Belfast). Never have I seen so many actual artifacts from history (the gun so and so was manning when he got the VC, etc.), and not just examples of some item.
6. In Paris (we only stopped over for two days) it was interesting to find how disorientated you become when you don’t speak the language. Simple things like directions and menus take on insane complications. There was an interesting reversal in Amsterdam whre the French tourists seemed to be out of the game most of the time, and I had to work to use a simple Dutch phrase since English is so common.
7. We toured Monet’s property in Normandy, and man, was he a lazy guy. It seems like just about everything he painted was located in his backyard. His flower gardens and lily ponds, etc. were magnificent, but It seemd they were developed and maintained as an art laboratory. Did he actually paint anything located more than a mile from his bedroom
8. WTF is up with the French translation of the TV series JAG. As an American, I’m embaressed. Is this some Fench plot to help discredit American culture?
I wanted to go into one of the many McDonald’s or TGI Fridays I saw in Paris (just to do my part in destroying French culture), but couldn’t see wasting a meal when I was enjoying French food so much
. Also, the French version of “Lets Make a Deal” was pretty funny to watch. You didn’t need to understand the language to get a kick out of the guy trading the good prize for the piece of crap behind door number three.
9. Any French I once knew has evaporated in the past 20 years. It did help a little, but not enough to really matter at all. I was pleased to be able to use a handful of lines I remember from the old “Jean Claude et Jacquilne” language series in Jr. High School. I went out of my way to order mineral water once, and my wife wondered why I was chuckling so much. If only I could find Jean Calude to tell him he had a phone call, then the experience would have been complete.
10. Amsterdam was great. Nice, relaxing, comfortable with a little eginess. For a party city, much nicer than a place like New Orleans. The coffeshops were interesting, but really very casual and unobtrusive -- the way it should be perhaps
The goods were top quality, but moderation pervents stupidity. In contrast, the red light district was like a big alcohol-fueled frat party on the weekend nights, and aside from the novelty value quickly became rather irritating and mundane. FWIW it came up several times how bad things were before the “liberalization” policy came into effect, and this from some rather straigt residents we happened to meet.
11. The Dutch beers are nice, but what’s with thiose 1/2 pint glasses. I dank mostly Guinness in both London and Amsterdam, and wine in France. I also noticed plenty of visitors from the British Isles in Amsterdam, and man can those guys pound the pints. There seems to be a voulme and rowdiness equation at work as well, related to the number of pints consumed
12. The Dutch masters suck. Sorry, just my uneducated artistic impression, but how many portraits of Captain So and So and his regiment can you look at in one day. They were all well executed, mind you, but the subject matter was stifiling. I guess when you’re getting paid to paint, you can’t always pick the best subjects.
13. If you could tube anywhere in London in 30 minutes, could walk anywhere in Amsterdam in about the same time. Just watch out for the bikes and the trams. That was an eye opener. In the U.S. the pedestrian has the right of way and will easily step out in front of your car even if they could wait 5 seconds and walk across a clear street. The pecking order in Amsterdam seemed to be trams, followed by bikes, followed by cars followed by sprinting pedestrians
14. Those tiny cars (in all cities, but mainly Paris and London) are way, way cool. The SMART -- what a neat machine.
http://www.smart.com/ Driving that around over here would cause accidents as people stared. And as soon as I stop telecommuting and can justify a car payment, I’m going to get one of those Morris/BMW Mini Sport models.
15. I noticed, particularly in Nothern Europe, that some individuals have a different concept about standing in lines/ques. That is, cut in front if you can. In the U.S. that’s the case in traffic, but it isn’t all that common in person just yet.
16. The Canals were cool, hell, I’ll say it again, the whole city of Amsterdam was cool.
Charon
