Paris by night

Although Paris is already a beautiful city during the day, I think many people would agree with me that it looks its best at night. There is just no other city in the world that is as pretty or as romantic as the French capital.

Although my wallet was stolen in the subway (first time it ever happened to me in my life - don't worry, the money and the wallet were returned), and my feet were still aching from all the walking we did (I mistakenly wore my light, but thin-soled sneakers), I still had a blast.

Exhausted from our "subway" city tour (we were too kuripot to get a "real" city tour - our non-kuripot excuse is that subways are faster than tour buses), we started our evening with a stroll through the Eiffel tower. It looks better when the sun goes down, and they turn the lights on:

Our real purpose was to take pictures, such as the ones below, and show them to our friends. There is nothing more idyllic than a picture of a couple with the Eiffel tower in the background - at night. You really can't go to Paris and leave without this - its a perfect "living room" picture, and a good conversation starter (i.e. "ay, you've been to Paris na pala. Yan ba yung Eippel Tower?" - in our living room , we get a lot of Capampangan guests hehehe).

Here they are:

We took so many pictures during this trip that our batteries ran out and all of our memory cards got full. That's no big deal, normally - however we brought along 3 cameras, 2 extra memory cards, and 1 extra battery. I figured we were taking about 150-200 pictures a day. That's a lot. But then again, you can never have too many pictures.

Anyway, after the obligatory pictures, we were hungry and wanted to eat. I "surprised" Mav by making dinner reservations at Gallopin, which is a very local, and a very French restaurant. There is emphasis on the word "surprised," since I told her about this plan way in advance - it was my first time in Paris, and I didn't want to get lost. This was our belated Valentine's day date.

The restaurant was in an out of the way place in a pretty seedy part of town. But it was packed. And I mean really packed. With locals! (The last people I wanted to see were tourists, like us) Good thing I made reservations.

I had potted duck Foie Gras (the house specialty - and supposedly, the best one in Paris) and Beef Bourguignon stew, Mav had onion soup and a grilled steak with Bernaise sauce:

The food was excellent. And I mean really, really, really good. Especially the Foie Gras - WOW! When I eat this stuff in Manila, I usually get just a tiny, half-a-toenail sized piece. And I'm talking about the little toenail here, not the big one. In Gallopin, it was as big as a large slice of bread.

Foie Gras is made in the most cruel way - involving force feeding ducks via a tube for 18 days (called gavage) before they are slaughtered. Anthony Bourdain, that popular tv celebrity chef, once said that the moment you taste really good Foie Gras - it makes you realize that the duck's suffering is all worth it. I agree with him wholeheartedly. It was so good, I wanted to hold back my crap the next day - kasi sayang naman (of course, I meant that in the most non-kadiri sort of way).

After our excellent dinner, we spent a couple more hours walking around this beautiful city, repeating "ang ganda no?" about 4 times every 5 mins.

Go to Paris! I guarantee you will fall in love with this place!

SNOW!!!!!!

I was supposed to do a post about Brussels today - how I liked the beer, the things I saw, etc. However, I'm going to write about something else, I can't contain my excitement any longer. Look what I saw when I peeked out of my window today:


SNOW! Finally!

I didn't think I'd see some snow until our skiing trip next week. Some ski resorts actually advertise here that if we go and there is no snow, they can provide it for us. Kind of like extra towels or pillows - "Hello housekeeping? Can you send up some extra snow in room 301 please? Thanks!"

In case you're wondering, this is the first time I've seen snow fall. Corny ba? It is so nice to look at, everything is just sooo white. Kinda reminds me of my hometown after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption - when everything was covered in a thin layer of white ashfall.

The only drawback is the temperature, its -13 degrees C today. My ears are probably going to fall off before I get to the office.

Have a nice day!

Dam Square

Here's a 360 degree video clip of Amsterdam's Dam Square:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5604112145667178469

Enjoy!

Curious things

I noticed two trivial, but curious things during my short journey. The first one involves traffic lights in Brussels:




That's right - the red stop lights are heart-shaped. Apparently, this is their special Valentine's "gimmick" for the whole month of February. To the Philippine politicians reading this - too late, di niyo na magagaya hehehe. I guess you can wait for Christmas, where you can turn the green traffic lights into christmas trees - but then again, that'll be too late for elections in May.


Another "curiousity" are the male urinals, which can be found in the Amsterdam Schiphol airport's rest rooms:



There is an embedded housefly near the center of the urinal. The theory is that if you give men something to aim for, they will instinctively try to hit it. Apparently, this reduces "spillage" by 80%. To quote the netlore archives:

"If you go to the men's washrooms at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam," Vicente wrote, "you may notice there's a fly in the urinals. So what do you think most men do? That's right, they aim at the fly when they urinate. They don't even think about it, and they don't need to read a user's manual; it's just an instinctive reaction. The interesting feature of these urinals is that they're deliberately designed to take advantage of this inherent human male tendency."

I will be the first one to admit that this theory is sound - I took aim at that fly as soon as I saw it.

Amsterdaam!

People's reactions to Amsterdam vary. Some people (like me and some of my friends) love it, others (like my mom) absolutely hate it. It is a place where bicycles replace cars,

and where they like to use 2 As instead of 1 ('a' instead of 'aa'):


Of course, Amsterdam is most notorius for its 'coffee shops,' which legally sell soft drugs (you can smell Marijuana everywhere, and I mean everywhere), and its red light area, where things are, to put it simply, shocking:


I spent 5 mins explaining to Mav what "Bondage," "SM," and "Animal" meant. If you don't know what these things mean, don't look them up - I don't want to pollute your mind (I already polluted Mav's by explaining). In fact, they invented the term "red light area." A red light at a window meant that you can get girls there:



The curtains are down on this one, meaning the girls are "busy," hehehe.

It really is a modern version of those 2 biblical cities, Sodom and Gomorra.

If you're an upright, religious guy (like I am hehehe), how can you possibly like this place? Well, I personally think it is unfair to judge Amsterdam based on drugs and sleazy red light bars alone. It would be like judging my hometown, Angeles City, based on our infamous red light area - Field's Ave.

The city is amazingly beautiful. We took a canal cruise (I know - its touristy, but what the heck - it's Valentines), and I was absolutely blown away. Here are some pictures:

View from the boat

Seven Bridges

Houseboats along the Canals
More canal pictures

Dutch people are also very warm and friendly. The food, though, is nothing to get excited about. The best Dutch food I had were the Von Dobben Croquets at Cafe Amsterdam in the Schipol Airport (no Visa needed - its in the non-Schengen section of the Airport). Dutch cheese, of course, is amazing, and is exempted from this observation.

If you have a couple of hours to kill in the Schiphol Airport, I suggest that you take the train to Amsterdam Centraal and have a look around the city. The canal cruise takes only 1 hour - and it is the best (and fastest) way to see the city. There are also free walking tours, operated by English speaking locals who rely on tips - these start at 11am and 3pm daily, the meeting point is right outside the train station. Skip those city tours they are selling from the airport - there are cheaper and better options.

Just remember, in this city, when the sign says "No Smoking," they are not usually talking about cigarettes.

The longest Valentine's day

Our flight from Manila to Amsterdam left at 11 am on Feb 14. It was a 13 hour flight - however due to the difference in timezones, we arrived in Amsterdam at around 6pm. This means we "gained" about 6-7 hours - it was an extended Valentine's day "date".

Since we were a bit full from all of those airplane meals, we decided to just have a quick (and cheap) meal somewhere in downtown Amsterdam for dinner.

We were walking around, trying to decide on a place to eat. A waitress spotted us and hopped out of the restaurant - she managed to convince us to have our dinner there. She uttered the magic words - "first drinks free." Hehehe, you know how much I like free drinks.

They had a Valentine's day special - a steak dinner for 10.95 euros. Thats still expensive for Philippine standards, but very reasonable for Amsterdam - where a good restaurant meal costs about 20-25euros per person.

We got our free drinks (water for Mav and a large beer for me), ordered 1 plate of steak ("sorry, we're not that hungry"). We cut the steak in half, and had our first "real" meal of the day (if you don't count the boxed food they serve in the airplanes).

A bottle of water costs about 3 euros, the beer was 5 euros. We paid 10.95 euros for the whole thing - that's almost 1/2 off! I guess the waitress was expecting us to order more.

To make up for this, I gave the waitress a 10 peso coin as tip - I told her that was her souvenir from me from Manila.

Score one for the cheapskates! Hehehe.

Our real Valentine's day dinner came a few days later - in Paris (naks - yabang hehehe). More on that later.

Finally!!!!

First the good news - after 2 months of waiting, sending my passport back and forth from Manila to Bangkok, and enduring the "mag-T-TNT ka no?" stares at the embassy, I finally managed to get all my required Visas. Here's the Polish one:

And here's the Schengen one (from the Dutch embassy):

Both allow multiple entries, and are valid until July 31, 2007. The funny thing is that my Polish visa only allows me to stay for 30 days per entry. This means that I have to exit Poland and enter again every 30 days. In case you're wondering, Poland is a member of the EU - but they have not signed the Schengen treaty yet, so I had to get both a Polish Visa and a Schengen Visa to avoid going home to Manila every 30 days. Imagine, the Polish government is forcing me to go on vacation (and around Europe) once a month - how nice of them.

If you are applying for any type of Visa and are using a Philippine passport, get ready. I still remember submitting a bookload of documents when I was applying for a Japanese visa, and people crying in the embassy when they learned that they got denied. I suppose you can't really blame these Consuls - a big percentage of Pinoys going abroad start as tourists and end up as TNTs.

I guess I just got lucky this time. Very lucky.

Next stop - Amsterdam. I am leaving next week on Feb. 14 - will be back in May. See you around!