Side Note: Paris

Getting There

At some point a long while back, a couple of my friends had proposed the idea of going to Paris for Halloween. I don’t remember who originally had the idea, or what they really expected to find there for the holiday itself, but I do remember that all of a sudden a huge group of IES students was interested in Paris. Word spread around, as word tends to do, and the next thing I knew, there were upwards of fifteen people expressing the desire to have a Parisian adventure of some sort.

After all the coordination stress and hassle we had gone through in Bruges, a couple of us decided it would be best if we split the group up into smaller parts based on when people were available to leave, and then let each of those smaller groups figure out transportation, housing, and the rest of their itinerary on their own. After all, we could always meet up with them once we got to Paris, and then we would skip the agonies of trying to coordinate so many different schedules at one time. My group ended up being trusty travel companions Adeola, Conny, and Marie.
Our original plan had been to take the high-speed Thalys train down to Paris, but we managed to miss the promotional deal that would have given us super cheap tickets, and decided shelling out 100+ euros just to get there wasn’t really worth the faster train. On a whim, I checked out the Eurolines bus prices, and found that we could get to the same place in twice the time, but at half the cost. We have time, right? I asked the group (we were planning on going Thursday to Sunday). Nobody could object to the more reasonable price, so we took a bus to Paris

The bus we took was an overnight bus, from Wednesday night to Thursday morning. In theory, this was great, because it meant that we could sleep while we rode down and arrive bright and early in Paris the next morning, rested and ready to take on the city. In practice, it meant that we were crammed into a slightly bumpy, slightly chilly bus for eight hours (except for the two obnoxiously long pit stops we made at the sketchiest gas stations in Europe), trying to tune out the cabin lights and the cheesy “easy listening” music that played nonstop on the radio.

Needless to say, we were a little cranky by the time we alighted in Paris at 6 am, but we hung out gamely in the bus station lobby until the sun came up, then we cast about for some breakfast. There was a little mall area outside the station, and we ended up eating at … McDonald’s.

Yes, that’s right – I ate at a McDonald’s for the first time since I’ve been in Europe. Part of me had vowed that I would never do such a thing, but part of me also couldn’t pass up a super-cheap breakfast and free Wi-Fi (which French McDonald’ses apparently instituted to make themselves seem like a hip hangout to attract the locals instead of a soul-sucking fast-food death chain for fat Americans). We waited in the restaurant long enough for some caffeine to kick in, then we braced ourselves to venture into Paris.

Five years ago I was also in Paris, during my first and only other trip to Europe. We were there for just two days, being led around in a giant tour group, but I remember having no idea how to navigate the Metro. Maybe the size and pace of our tour was overwhelming, or maybe I’m just more versed in the ways of public transport now, because this time the Paris metro seemed liked the simplest thing on earth. We bought day passes and hopped on a train, and twenty-odd minutes later we were in Montmartre, where our hotel for the weekend was.

Since we were in Montmartre, we had to go see Sacré Coeur. It was just as beautiful as I remembered it from five years earlier, and half as crowded. The view from the top was gorgeous too, even though it was a little foggy.

After that we descended the hill and poked around in some fun little Montmartre shops, then went back to find lunch near our hotel. Badly in need of a rest, we napped – all except for Conny, who was working on her Halloween costume. More on that later.

After our rest, we decided that we would go to Notre Dame for the afternoon. We set out, found the cathedral, and explored it until it got dark.

Following that, we walked along the Seine – taking in the loveliness of Paris lit up at night – and made our way to the Musée d’Orsay, for a 19th century art fest. The Musée d’Orsay used to be a train station, but it was converted into a spectacular museum. Like I said, it holds mostly 19th century art, which includes everyone from David and Delacroix, to Manet, Degas, Monet, Seurat, Millet, Courbet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh. It’s probably the single greatest concentration in one place of paintings-I’ve-studied-in-my-art-history-classes. Ecstatic? You bet I was.

The only thing that kept my visit from being the perfect museum experience was a family of tourists (a mom and two kids) who were flying through the entire museum, pausing at any given painting only long enough to snap a picture of it and walk away. I saw the mother literally steering her children by their shoulders to the most well-known pieces, saying, “Oh, this is a really famous one,” and waiting impatiently for her son or daughter to take a quick picture of the work. The second they had finished, she grabbed their shoulders again and dragged them away, darting toward the next “must see” item.

I always wonder, when I see people like this in art museums, why they even bother coming to the place at all. It would be so much easier for them to sit on their computer and Google Van Gogh or Monet, and you can be sure they’d find some better images than their two-second snapshot will ever produce. It’s not about standing in the same room as a famous painting. It’s about getting a chance to take a proper look at some art.

So there’s my editorial for the day. In silent tribute to my annoyance, I refused to take any pictures of the paintings I saw. I just looked at them for a really long time.

By the time we were done, the museum was about to close (it was nearly 9pm). We were all tired and famished so we headed back to our hotel to grab some dinner there. We got sandwiches from a little shop on our hotel’s street that was about to close, then went up to our room and went to bed. So concluded our first (long) day in Paris.

Side Note: Brussels

After a week of short-distance adventures, it was time for another big trip. The destination this time? Belgium again, but farther south and farther east than we had been in Bruges, all the way to capital of Europe itself: Brussels.

I was traveling this time with Kathleen, Marie, Adeola, and for the first time ever – Conny (hooray for roommate adventures). Since most of us had already been to Belgium, we decided to make the trip a short one, leaving Friday morning and coming back Saturday night.

Our adventure began (as our adventures so often do) with an early morning trek to Centraal Station. There we went to buy some tickets, but were informed that the ones we purchased (weekend returns, which are a special deal) were valid only after 9 am… and the train we wanted left at 8:54. We asked around at the various ticket desks to see if those last six minutes would really matter. The salespeople insisted they would, and our only other option was to wait a whole hour for the next train to come.

On a whim, we went up to the platform to see if we could somehow talk the train’s conductor into letting us on with our tickets. The train pulled in not two minutes after we arrived, and we strode along its length trying to find someone to approach. Conny and I made it all the way to the front of the train before we found anyone, and then it was the train driver himself, who said we needed to talk to a “car manager.” So we scurried back down the way we had come, trying to find such a person. The first conductor-type we ran into just shrugged and shook his head. The second one referred us to his boss, who was rapidly walking away from us back toward the front of the train. I had resigned myself to catching the later train, but Conny ran ahead to catch up with the manager, and after talking with him for a minute or so, smiled and waved us onto the train.

We had an uneventful trip into Brussels, arrived on time and made our way to our hostel, which was called the Van Gogh because apparently Vincent van Gogh had briefly worked and lived there at some point. Pretty cool, but I think I’ve become a little bit jaded about that artist since I see his things in the Netherlands all the time.

The hostel room itself left a lot to be desired. It smelled vaguely of urine, the furniture was wobbly, and only one of the three bunk beds had a ladder to the top. There were also five of us in a room meant for six, which meant we would probably get an odd roommate later on. Not ones to be too bothered by any of this, however, we struck out to explore Brussels. This basically entailed eating our way through the city and wandering around with rather aimlessly.

We stopped to get lunch at a cheap falafel place near our hostel, where we discovered that a sandwich “avec frites” meant that the french fries were actually included on the sandwich. We ambled down a prominent-looking street basing our direction on whichever way looked most interesting. We managed to pass a couple of intriguing things, like a giant pillar (The Congress Column – national monument of Belgium) and a lovely old cathedral.

Belgium is very cartoon-oriented, since the guys who invented Tin Tin and the Smurfs were both Belgian. There’s a Comic Strip Museum in the city somewhere, and there are a bunch of “cartoon walls” where people have painted giant comic-style murals amid the normal buildings. They added a bit of color and fun to what was otherwise a fairly drab city, and give Brussels some of its trademark absurdity.

Fireworks!

And Zorro? Absurd.

After our brief bit of exploring we managed to find ourselves in a touristy center full of chocolate shops and restaurants selling all the french fries and waffles you could ever want. We bought individual bonbons at one of the chocolate stores so that we could at least say we tried some of the fancy chocolate, and then we sat around eating waffles and being entertained by a guy who was awkwardly drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon. This man – of some ambiguous nationality, though he was speaking in English – was stumbling around the square, standing on the bistro tables and swapping hats with random passersby. “I love your hands, they are so gentle,” he proclaimed to the exasperated shop-keeper who tried to help him down from the tables. “They are the nicest hands in the world.” Absurd.

Chocolate!

Waffles!

After waffles, we did what we do best – wandering! We had a acquired another map for young travelers, which was similar to the one we had in Bruges, but unfortunately not as reliable. Many of the places it mentioned were either closed or not where they were supposed to be, but it was helpful in directing us to some Brussels staples like the Mannekin Pis and the Grand Place, where the UN building and some fancy old guild houses are located.

Mannekin Pis. Absurd.

Le Grand Place. Pretty typical, actually.

We continued our wanderings in and out of various stores (one devoted entirely to Tin Tin, one devoted entirely to beer, most devoted entirely to chocolate) until we started to feel hungry for dinner. After some fruitless questing for a so-called “food street” we saw in our map, we settled on a reasonably-priced Chinese restaurant. There, we were served heaping portions of food, and I had a plate flung (and shattered) in my direction by an oblivious small child who was related to the proprietors in some way. There was also something called “basilisk” on the menu. Absurd.

Mmm. Basilisk!

We decided to give our map one last chance by following its directions to get to a nearby parking garage. From there, it said, you could catch a spectacular view of the city, and you wouldn’t have to pay for any of it. The view was indeed spectacular, particularly at night with all the buildings lit up. We stayed on the roof taking pictures for awhile, and then returned to our hostel for the evening.

The next morning, at my request, we set out for the Musee des Beaux-Arts/Magritte Museum, where I was pleased to discover that even a year and a half since my last French lesson, I could still read 90% of the text on the walls. We also saw some very weird art (typical of Surreal Magritte) and some very amazing art. The best part for me was seeing Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat, a perennial favorite of art historians and regular historians alike.

Morbid? Maybe. Awesome? Absolutely.

Plus, Marie and I even managed to stumble upon our first real Rachel Ruysch painting! A happy surprised after all our foiled questing earlier in the week/semester.

We spent several hours in the museum, and afterwards we were ready for lunch. We managed to find a street that was literally just cheap Greek pita shops, and picked one at random to go to. After lunch, we began to wander some more, but there wasn’t a whole lot else we wanted to see. We found a couple more interesting statues and went into a couple of semi-interesting shops, but it was probably a good thing we had only intended to stay for one night, because by the end of Saturday afternoon, we were running out of things to do, and mostly wanted to head home and sleep.

Godiva window display. Absurdly cute.

So after stocking up on some Belgian chocolate at the most reasonably-priced place we could find, we grabbed some fries for dinner and headed off to the train station. The train we wanted was listed on the boards, but instead of a platform number, there were simply three asterisks (***). Knowing this could not bode well, we cast about for some more information, alternately eavesdropping, schedule-scanning, and battling our way to the ticket counter, only to be referred down to the information desk on another floor.

En route I saw a station employee (a maintenance worker of some kind, I think) who seemed to know something about what was going on, as he was pointing to one of the schedule boards and talking at the crowd of people milling around it. Unfortunately, I think he was speaking Flemish or a very strongly accented sort of Dutch, because I couldn’t understand anything he said, and my inquiries (first in English and then in French) yielded nothing but apologetic blank stares.

When we eventually found the right information desk, we were given helpful advice by a young-ish man who was surprisingly cheerful for having to work the Saturday night shift at a train station. No, he didn’t know the reason our train had been held up, but he recommended we hop aboard a train to Antwerp and then try and catch a different train to Amsterdam from there. If all else fails, he reminded us, we would at least be that much closer to where we wanted to be than if we stayed in Brussels.

Eager to trust in the friendly, smiley information guy (and honestly having nothing better to do), we got on the incoming Antwerp train and made it to that station without issue. We had about half an hour before another train headed to Amsterdam came in, which was just enough time to use the bathroom and get waffles out of the vending machines (one of my favorite European commodities). The train to Amsterdam was incredibly crowded (likely because the train we had wanted – and all other trains using that stretch of track to Brussels – had been canceled), but we all managed to find seats scattered throughout it. Adeola and I actually sat in little fold-down seats in the in-between compartments, but it worked, and we had a long and engrossing conversation until we made it back to Amsterdam.

We reached the doors of Funen a few minutes before midnight – just in time to see some of our friends heading out to start their Saturday evenings. We were all exhausted, though, so we stowed all of our Belgian goodies and settled down to sleep.

The Top 5 Strangest Things

Note: I wrote this post several weeks ago, but didn’t want to publish it until I had finished writing about the things that happened before it. You can blame any weird anachronisms on the delay.

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I can hardly believe it, but last week marked the halfway point of my time here in the Netherlands. It’s been a good term, full of lots of fun and travel and adventure and hardly any of the homesickness and emotional craziness that I had prepared myself for. So in honor of a successful first half-semester, I present to you (in the order that they occurred):

The Top 5 Strangest Things I’ve Seen in The Netherlands So Far:

1. “Proud Sons of Maastricht”

The weekend Stewart and I went to Maastricht, we did a lot of people-watching while we were wandering around. On our second night in the city we happened across a group of young male Maastrichters congregating in a corner of the square. They were all just sitting/standing around and drinking while one of their number wore an Arab-style costume and stood over a kiddie-pool with a snorkel on. They were accompanied by a boom box playing an upbeat soundtrack of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits. Naturally. Stewart and I were convinced that the guys were street performers or something, but we later deduced that it was some strange sort of bachelor party, because all of the men (who weren’t wearing ethnic costumes) had on black t-shirts with “GAME OVER” under a picture of a man and woman standing together.

Sort of like this.

The entire group seemed intent on the task of filling up the kiddie-pool with water, but perhaps they had come ill-prepared (or were simply too drunk to function), because they actually seemed to be making negative progress during the time that Stewart and I were there. We were watching them closely, intent on figuring out what on earth they were trying to do, when all of a sudden we heard loud military songs and turned to see a parade of uniformed soldiers literally marching down the tiny street behind us. Stewart and I had seen a couple stray soldiers wandering around during the day, but the whole brigade seemed weirdly out of place.

What made it even weirder, though, was the fact that the soldiers weren’t Dutch – they were American. I didn’t think they looked like American military, but they were definitely singing something about “Gettysburg” and “Bunker Hill.” They chanted their way brazenly through the street (drowning out strains of “Billie Jean” in the background) as Stewart and I looked on bewilderedly.

I was waiting for the guy in the Arab suit to do something political and symbolic, but he totally missed his chance. Meanwhile, the soldiers marched on around the corner without any explanation, and nobody else in the square seemed very phased. To this day we have no idea what on earth was going on.


2. A Royal Promenade

The last of our IES orientation activities was a mandatory lecture about the evils of plagiarism. En route to that lecture, I had to trek along Prins Hendrikkade (a busy main street) with a couple of my friends from Centraal Station to the International Students building (the one of “blue brick road” fame). We were hurrying along, trying not to be late when we were distracted by a pair of policemen riding down the median of Prins Hendrikkade on large brown horses. “Mounted police officers,” we remarked, amused. “Didn’t know they had those here, too!”

But as we continued down the road we saw that the policemen weren’t just on patrol – they were escorting a series of 5 or 6 horse-drawn carriages full of people in fancy hats. The women were in stately flowery affairs, and some of the men were actually wearing top hats. They rolled casually down the center of the street, taking in the sights of the city. A couple of them smiled and waved to the people staring at them from the sidewalk.

I never got a confirmation on this, but I’m pretty sure some members of the royal family were in those carriages. It happened on a day when Queen Beatrix was supposed to be addressing Parliament about something, so apparently she was in town. She may or may not have been in one of the carriages, but other important people definitely were – cruising around Amsterdam in their classy top hats as if it happens every day. And who knows – maybe in the life of a Dutch dignitary, it does.


3. The Old Man and the Stone

The weekend Kristin came to visit, we took her to see some of the most touristy places in the city. As we were passing through Dam Square, a large area surrounded by the Royal Palace, Madame Tussaud’s, and other high profile attractions, we saw an Amsterdam Souvenirs shop with a giant yellow clog outside. Naturally, we had to take our pictures in it.

There was a crowd of people around the oversized shoe, more or less patiently waiting their turn to hop in and declare their dorky tourist status. Kristin, Conny, and I waited as well, and when some of the crowd had cleared out a little, Kristin and I walked towards the clog to get in. We were trying to settle ourselves into a sufficiently camera-worthy pose when a concerned-looking old man approached us, as if trying to get our attention. Worried that he might be trying to tell us to stop playing around on a piece of someone else’s property, we froze uncertainly. The man was mumbling something quietly in Dutch, and I strained to make out a familiar word, to no avail.

That was when he stopped, produced a stone about the size of a soup bowl, walked over to us and placed it officiously inside of the clog. With that he looked at us, bobbed his head, and tottered off into the bustling crowd, leaving Kristin and me to look at each other in bafflement.

We took our picture in the clog as quickly as possible, and hopped out a little nervously. “What was that about?” asked Conny, who had taken the picture. “I have no idea,” I said, “but it was really weird.” “It freaked me out a little, honestly,” agreed Kristin.

What was the meaning of the mysterious rock? Was it a weight? A bomb? An offering to the clog god?

We may never know.

Pretending we're not scared.

4. Let’s Talk About Sex

Amsterdam is famous for its liberal views and high tolerance of all things sexual. Gay marriage has been legal here for quite some time, the prostitutes in the Red Light District have a workers union, and there is not one, but two museums dedicated entirely to sex. But did you know that the sex education policies in the Netherlands are also among the most liberal in the world? The national guidelines for sex education are much more comprehensive than what is generally taught in the U.S., and most people here scoff at the idea of “abstinence only” education.

I’m not bothered by this attitude - I even support it (did you know the Netherlands also has the lowest teen pregnancy rate in Europe?). But what I like to think of as my own liberal attitude still didn’t prepare me for what I found at the NEMO Museum.

NEMO is a children’s museum across the harbor from where I have my classes. In most respects it’s a lot like any Science Center I’ve ever been to – several floors of fun games and interactive exhibits designed to teach kids about the world. As you advance up the levels, however, you eventually reach the “Teen Facts” floor. There you can find, among other things:

- A short animated video of the changes teenage bodies go through during puberty
- A game of Memory where the cards are microscopic or heat-signature depictions of things like sperm, neurotransmitters, or STD germs
- A display of wooden artist’s model dolls arranged in different Kama sutra positions, and -
- A glass box containing giant fabric tongues that you can stick your arms in to practice “making out”

You think I’m kidding.

I’m not kidding.

5. The Fresh Prince of… H&M?

After we had run out of pretty scenic things to see during Tarra’s visit to Amsterdam, we spent some time walking around Kalverstraat – a very big, very commercial pedestrian street. We shopped for awhile in H&M, the cheap, trendy clothing stores that are ubiquitous in Europe, and not uncommon in the hipper cities of the United States.

Tarra and I were perusing the racks of scarves and bags and stylish dresses when the edgy EuroPop that was playing in the store suddenly gave way to the most unexpected – and quite possibly most ridiculous – piece of music ever: the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song.

We both did a bit of a double take, and then cracked up for awhile in the middle of the store. There’s nothing like the musical stylings of Will Smith to make you want to buy that leather-fur-and-sequins purse you’ve been eyeing for awhile. Right?

Oh, Europe...


I hope these anecdotes have been as entertaining for you as the actual encounters were for me. Here’s hoping the rest of my semester will be just as wonderfully strange!

Den Haag

Upon my return from Edinburgh, I was faced with an unusual week. Had I been at any other European university, it would have been the week of my fall break. Had I been at any other Dutch school besides a university, it would have been the week of my fall break. Unfortunately, I’m at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and they don’t have an official, scheduled fall vacation. What happens instead is that professors may or may not cancel class that week, depending on whether or not they have younger children to be home with. Other professors take advantage of the fact that their colleagues need to be with their families and cancel their classes as well.

And then there are my teachers, who decided that we would not only still have class that week, but we would use our class time to do more time-consuming things than usual – like go on field trips or have guest lecturers. All of my teachers decided to do this, except for my kindly old Dutch Language professor, Freek.* I think the idea was that if you decided to cut class that week (to have your own de facto fall break), you wouldn’t be missing anything that you couldn’t go do on your own, but still… it was a little frustrating.

*Yes, that is his real name. You actually say it more like “Frey-k,” but in my head, he will always be Professor Freak.

On the other hand, I got the opportunity to visit some cities in the Netherlands outside of Amsterdam. I spent one day in Utrecht, and one day in Haarlem, visiting the Aboriginal Art Museum/Utrecht Centraal Museum, and the Teylers Museum/Great Church of St. Bavo’s, respectively. Unfortunately, since these were fast-paced field trips, I didn’t bother to bring a camera. I thus have no pictures to show you – you’ll just have to trust that I was there.

Because Professor Freek had canceled my Monday-Thursday Dutch class, I had an extra free day at the end of the week. I decided to continue my string of city-hopping by taking a trip to Den Haag. Den Haag is better known to English-speakers as The Hague, the seat of the Dutch government and the city where the royal family currently resides. It’s about a 45-minute train ride west of Amsterdam, but it’s well worth the journey (and the €12 return ticket).

Like in most European cities of note, there are lots of pretty buildings and impressive statues. More importantly, however, there are two excellent art museums – The Mauritshuis Museum and the Escher Museum.

I went to see the Mauritshuis because it was supposed to have a painting by Rachel Ruysch, a 17th century painter of flower still-lifes on whom I’m supposed to do a paper for my Colour & Culture class. Despite the fact that Ruysch was incredibly prolific and lived in or around Amsterdam for most of her life, her paintings are surprisingly hard to come by. The people at the Rijksmuseum didn’t even know who I was talking about when I inquired there, but the Mauritshuis website claimed to have at least one of her paintings on view.

Unfortunately, when I got there, I learned that the floor with the Ruysch painting was temporarily closed. Just my luck. Fortunately, there are more exciting things to see at the Mauritshuis than a painting of flowers. Like what, you ask?

Oh, I don't know... this?

After reveling in the Vermeer for awhile (and buying a postcard of the closed Ruysch in the gift shop), I had lunch at a cool little café with my traveling companions, Kathleen and Marie. We were served heaping sandwiches accompanied by necessary forks and knives, ate them, then set off through the misty Den Haag weather to destination number two: The Escher Museum.

M.C. Escher. Also possibly an evil wizard, or Rasputin.

I love M.C. Escher, and I loved the museum. In addition to having tons of Escher prints and drawings on display, there was an installation of whimsical chandeliers in each of the rooms of the building, which used to be a palace. So really, the museum was like 3 museums in one: part Escher, part historical landmark, and part display space for the artist who had created the chandeliers. Visitors were allowed to photograph everything – sans flash, of course – and although I usually don’t take pictures of art on principle (I’d much rather take the time to look at art instead of snapping a picture that will never be as good as a professional replication anyway), I was so delighted that I couldn’t help but try to document some of my favorites.

After two museums, we were pretty wiped out, so we headed back home to Amsterdam. I hardly saw half of what The Hague has to offer, but it was enough to make for an absolutely excellent day.

Side Note: Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Exchange – Part 2

Scarcely four days after Tarra had come to visit me in Amsterdam, I hopped on a plane from Schiphol to go visit her in Edinburgh. Or at least, I tried to hop on the plane, but was delayed for 40 minutes by some “technical problems” (read: the plane in front of ours was running late and blocking our gate). At Schiphol you don’t pass through security until just outside your gate, and since they didn’t know for sure which gate we’d leave from, they made every single person on the flight stand in the security line while they tried to figure things out. Everybody took it fairly well, with the exception of a whiny Canadian woman in the line in front of me. She complained quietly but incessantly to her long-suffering companion – an Irish man who may or may not have been her husband – the entire time we waited.

Fortunately for me there was a young mother from New Zealand in front of the complainer. She looked very tired, but was still smiling gamely and playing with her adorable, blond, chattery little boy. That cuteness was probably the only thing that stopped me from going crazy listening to the obnoxious woman in front of me.

We finally got on the plane, though, and our flight went smoothly after that. There was a nice lady from Edinburgh on the plane next to me, and she recommended some things to do and see during my stay.

I navigated my through passport control and the tiny Edinburgh airport. I withdrew some money (in pounds!) and, per Tarra’s instruction, hopped on a bus to the center of town. Tarra’s Thursday classes didn’t end until 5:00, so I had planned to meet her at the Scott Monument, an old Gothic spire that stands in the middle of a pretty park. Because of my plane’s small delay, I only had to wait about 15 minutes, during which I took some pictures of my surroundings.

When Tarra arrived, she took me back to her flat by way of a scenic path along the Royal Mile (a big stone street full of restaurants and tourist shops that leads up to the Edinburgh Castle) and through a pretty park near a posh neighborhood that J.K. Rowling has been spotted in before.

Tarra fixed a delicious dinner of baked sweet potatoes with lots of harvesty spices and broccoli with a very British cheese called Wensleydale (Wallace and Gromit’s cheese of choice). After we ate we sat around and chatted with her some of her lovely flatmates until we got tired and went to bed.

Friday morning, after a hearty breakfast of porridge (oatmeal) made from good Scottish oats, we set off back to Old Town. Edinburgh is divided into Old Town, where all the roads are twisty and narrow and the buildings have a quaint, stony, hodgepodge feel, and New Town, which is a Victorian creation full of nicely gridded roads, pretty parks, and grand buildings set apart at more regular intervals. Tarra had class at the edge of Old Town in a giant gorgeous castle-like academic building that abuts the Royal Mile.

I left Tarra to her studies and walked back up a the narrow alleyway, or “close,” as the Scots say, to the Royal Mile, where I began to peruse the street at my leisure. I took pictures of some statues, walked up to the castle at the top of the hill, and ducked in and out of the tourist shops selling cashmere and tartan and shortbread.

Most of the shops sold postcards and key chains of different Scottish crests or coats of arms. I checked for my mom’s maiden name among them, but apparently “Sims” is not a touristy Scottish name. In true Scottish fashion, I was also regaled in pretty much every shop to a soundtrack of bagpipes blaring old and modern tunes. Some of the musicians had CDs for sale. “Red Hot Chili Pipers” sounded the most promising.

When Tarra was finished class she took me down a curving street called Grassmarket, where a bunch of more offbeat little shops and restaurants reside. We popped into a few stores selling old books or vintage clothes or artsy little trinkets, and then we stopped at Café Jacques for lunch (I had a baked potato topped with cheddar and baked beans – hearty, filling, and fabulously U.K.).

After lunch we explored a few more stores, by and far the best of which was Fabhatrix, an artsy little hat store crammed with all the crazy hats you could ever want. We had to try lots of them on, of course. They were definitely fabulous.

After we were done with Grassmarket Street, Tarra took me to Greyfriars Kirk – a pretty little church with a lovely cemetery in the churchyard. Local lore has it that a police officer was buried in the churchyard, but his little Skye terrier, Bobby, was so loyal that he stood watch over the grave every day for years. When Greyfriars Bobby died himself, he was also buried in the churchyard with a little memorial. This adorable tale has apparently become a popular children’s story in the U.K.

Tarra and I looked around inside the church, then spent awhile wandering in the cemetery.

After that we went back to Tarra’s room to regroup before heading to the Elephant House (the café where J.K. Rowling famously scribbled notes for Harry Potter on the napkins) to meet up with some surprise guests: The Hunts. Apparently Kristin’s family was visiting, and they had decided to come to Edinburgh for the day. They had spent all morning exploring the castle, and then they headed down to the Elephant House to meet up with Tarra and me.

The Hunts’ visit was whirlwind and kind of surreal. For me, it’s one thing to see a good friend in a foreign place, but quite another to see their family. My friends and I visit each other fairly often, but it’s not usually the case that our families come along for the ride. Mrs. Hunt seemed happy to see me, though. She hugged me and kissed my cheek more times in the span of two hours than she has in the four or five years I’ve known her daughter. “She was sleep-deprived and in full-on mom mode,” Kristin said when I mentioned it to her later. “But it’s not surprising.”

Eventually the Hunts had to be on their way, and Tarra and I had to get back to her flat for dinner and head out to see a student improv group that Tarra wanted to take me to (in response to me taking her to Boom Chicago). Sadly, when we got there, the show was sold out and we weren’t able to get inside. This was doubly frustrating because we had tried unsuccessfully all day to get tickets on the phone or computer, basically because the box office workers at the theater are slackers. We considered going out to try to do something else, but ended up just going back and having tea and snacks with Tarra’s friends and flatmates.

Saturday morning we went for breakfast to a restaurant called Always Sunday. There we had mini versions of a traditional Scottish breakfast consisting of about five different savory courses. I even tried some of Tarra’s (vegetarian) haggis. Not bad.

Then we went to National Gallery of Edinburgh, where I got my art museum fix for the weekend. We had lunch at the Gallery’s pretty restaurant – the Scottish Café and Restaurant. We ordered smoothies and a “cheese board” made up of four or five different cheeses, oat crackers and pepper chutney.

After that we headed into New Town and looked at the clean and organized side of Edinburgh. The weather was absolutely perfect that day, so we stopped to take lots of pictures.

We wandered around for awhile in New Town, past fancy boutiques and orderly churches, then headed back to the Royal Mile to for Chocolate Soup. Chocolate Soup is a café that sells all sorts of delicious chocolate concoctions. Tarra and I got “Hot Chocolate Sundaes” and a scrumptious brownie. The pictures speak for themselves.

Eventually we went to find a proper dinner, and settled on a vegetarian restaurant that we wandered past. After that, Tarra wanted to show me one of her favorite pubs – a fun and classy little place called the Brass Monkey. We stayed at the pub for quite awhile, joined by Tarra’s flatmate Claire. We talked and laughed and listened to music until it was late and we were tired, and then we set off for their flat and went to bed.

Sunday morning I took the bus back to the airport and flew back to Schiphol without any problems. I had to readjust to riding buses on the right side of the road and not being able to understand a lot of the conversation around me. It had been a bit of a surprise to me to see those things in Edinburgh, but it was a great visit.