We stepped off the plane in Amsterdam and caught the train to the historic center of the city. From our first step out of the station, we noticed a remarkable thing. The multi-colored, white gabled houses were incredibly cute. Friendly tour operators offered us scenic canal rides. Stands sold ice cream, an assortment of fried delights, and beer. There were lots of tourists. In other words, we were in Disney Europe.
But before we get to Amsterdam, we felt we should add to Sarah and Julia’s account of our time in Ireland, which thematically could be described as ‘It’s a small world after all.’
Our first night in Ireland was spent in Galway, and in our attempt to be “culturally sensitive” and relate to the local people, as all mature travelers should do, we just had to go hit up the pubs. One of our first stops? The King’s Head Pub, showing close likeness to our very own Queen’s Head Pub at Harvard (brought to you by Senior Gift… wow, that seems a long time ago). Along our drive from Galway to Cork, we stopped in Limerick for a bite to eat at Molly’s Sandwich shop. After parking Dooley McFiat (props to Julia for parallel parking stick shift on the ‘wrong’ side of the road), we all stared in disbelief at the large red and yellow sign across the street, which read “The Hong Kong.” Heidi got so excited she almost had a heart attack. For non-Harvard blog followers, the Hong Kong, or the Kong as it is more affectionately known in Cambridge, is one of the most frequented Harvard bars. (Hello to Noodle, who still needs to have a scorpion bowl). Later, we stopped at both Temple Bar and Grafton Street in Dublin, though we humbly acknowledge that the names of these Cambridge hot-spots were undoubtedly stolen from the Irish originals. It seems that our fears of leaving college and the familiar weren’t necessary after all.
Not only did it feel at times as if we never quite left Cambridge, we had a number of chance encounters that made it hard to believe we were all the way on the other side of the Atlantic. First, on her morning run in Cork, Courtney found that the scenic running path along the river ended unexpectedly at Shandon Boathouse. After a friendly rowing coach named Cathy gave her directions, Courtney, in typical Sarah Moore fashion, inquired whether Cathy knew Harvard’s most notoriously incomprehensible Cork native, Breffny Morgan. She did. In fact, Cathy had grown up rowing with Breffny. After realizing their weak connection, Cathy, who was also an elementary school history teacher, insisted that Courtney come on a driving tour/history lesson of Cork. During the tour, Cathy revealed that Courtney’s ancestors, the McGraths, were a very well-known family in the Cork area.
Of course, this was neither the first nor the last time that we were impressed with Irish hospitality. Gill found no place in the packed-to-the-rafters Dooley McFiat, so caught a bus to Dublin and re-met up with the girls at the Marlborough Hostel. Four and a half hours of sleep on the bus were apparently enough to cure her of jetlag, and we headed out to the streets of Dublin in the wee hours of the morning. After a harrowing experience at Gogarty’s Bar with company whose average age was over 40, we found our way to Temple Bar, where Sarah and Julia struck up conversation with two charming men who invited us to a house party when the bar closed. Heidi met a man named Ronan Maloney who mentioned he had once lived in an obscure town in Connecticut named Old Greenwich. Gill, who grew up in neighboring Riverside, traded stories with Ronan about going to Ada’s candy store. Though strangers, they soon bonded over their love of the late Ada, who would quite lovingly cough in her hands then proceed to dip her clean fingers into the candy bowl for Ronan and Gill to enjoy.
There were certainly many more incidents that led us to title this blog post, “It’s a small world after all.” Julia and Sarah ran into a former Harvard women’s hockey player in the streets of Dublin. Kara saw a rather attractive man on the streets whom she had seen the previous night at a pub. An extremely well-dressed pregnant woman at the train station in Amsterdam, who convinced us that you can in fact be hot while carrying an extra person, was sited again on the other side of town, hours later dressed in another equally fashionable outfit.
Thus, we bring you to Disney Europe, properly named Amsterdam. Upon our arrival to this new city and country, we caught a tram to our hotel – shout out to Hermitage Hotel on Nieuwe Kriesvagoiwejr;lakmdfo (Dutch is unpronounceable) for beautiful rooms, great location, and rock-bottom prices… and to Kirstyn Knox (who joined us on our flight to Amsterdam- welcome Kirstyn!) for finding and booking it – and rented bikes for the day. We concluded bikes were the absolute best way to get around Amsterdam, as long as one manages to remember to no longer “stay left, look right,” and to avoid the trams which zoom around the city with alarming stealth. The phrase, “silent but deadly,” must have been made first to describe these trams.
Our 24-hours in Amsterdam were action packed, yet relaxed. And filled with many lessons.
1. A croquette is a traditional Dutch dish filled with hot meat and lard, then deep fried, which can easily burn your mouth and clog your arteries if not careful. Thank you to Kirstyn who took one for the team to teach us this important lesson.
2. It is entirely possible to make prostitution and marijuana look classy, if you put them on beautiful historical canal streets that look like the rest of quaint Amsterdam. Welcome to the Red Light District.
3. It is “not possible” to: get olives on only ½ of your pizza, to get tap water, and to get a pizza at the same time as the appetizer- in some restaurants. Sidenote: if you Italianize your Spanish by changing your accent, your friends will think you are very smart and fluent in another Romantic language.
4. Haagen-Daaz tastes much better in the Netherlands.
5. Van Gogh created close to 2000 works of art (800 paintings and 1000 drawings) in his 10-year career. He also had a religious beginning, though he later came to reject his faith. Hello, we are Harvard students- we had to include an educational component :)
6. Biking through Amsterdam is really fun, albeit slightly dangerous/exhilarating/fill-in-the-blank, and should be mentioned more than once in this blog, in case a reader is not reading every single word of this amazingly intriguing blog, Euroclass09.
In sum, Disneyland is right. It is a small world after all.
With love,
Heidi, Courtney, Kara, Gill, and Kirstyn
