Time to say goodbye...

It has came down to this. After nearly a month in Europe visiting 9 cities in 5 countries, we came to the very last day. The time when not only we had to say goodbye to our wonderful hosts. Not only to say goodbye to Europe, afscheid van Nederland, auf wiedersehen Deutschland, Sbohem Česká republice, arrivederci Italia, and au revoir France, but also to say goodbye to each other. However, it was not a goodbye, good journey, and good luck, it was in fact a until we meet again. It was only for a short time, and it will only lead to another rendezvous. Nevertheless, we were still saddened that this event, our wonderful honeymoon that couldn't have been any more perfect, had came to an end. It was not going to be our last trip together, as we have discovered. The trip had opened many more destination ideas, in Asia, within the US, down-under Australia, and even back to Europe again. We couldn't wait for that to happen. For now, we were ready to head to the airport.

We arrived at Schiphol airport early. That was necessary, as we learned that many seemed to be traveling out that day. It took a while to get my luggages checked in and my flight confirmed. After all that, we had enough spare time for a cup of coffee.

While waiting with our cups of Joes, in order to make light of things, I suggested for a couple or so pictures to be taken. One last one, right? Lala was more than willing, although ibu Ety was hesitantly reluctant to the idea. We convinced her easily anyway.





Sure enough, ibu Ety was quite photogenic after all. Of course, Lala and I took pictures of each other, at the same time. At the moment, there are only pictures of her taking pictures of me, but not vice versa. Honey, would you send them to me?



It was fun. And it went by quick. Then it was time for me to head on to thru the security check point, and finally towards my boarding gate.

We made our final goodbyes and hugs. We kissed as passionately in public while trying to remain proper, to ensure that no one would glanced twice at us. Who knows how the culture would be here. Then again, in the land where prostitution and drugs are legal, a little public affection would do no harm. As I said, we kissed passionately and for the last time, until we meet again. We still were not sure when that would be. We hoped soon. I glanced over to ibu Ety and caught her wiping her tears with her ready-for-the-occasion tissue. I went over to her and gave her a hug too. I wished her well and said many thanks for all that she had done. She had helped made our trip more pleasant. A kind woman, indeed.

Then I was off, thru the security point, and around the corner, where I kept looking back to see Lala, my wife. I tried to look at her there looking back at me as much as I can, until around the corner I can no longer see her. Her flight was to leave about 4 to 5 hours after. I already missed her. We would see each other and talk the next time online, via Live Messenger. It was to be back to how we first got to know each other. Take care my love. This had been a great trip, and surely the first of many to come.

THE END

Last full day in Amsterdam, last chance to shop and etc.

We woke up with one primary mission in mind...or at least Sheilla's mind. To find that Vero Moda bag. Also, Sheilla needed to return a pair of shorts from River Island and to buy pen refills for her dad.

After grabbing two cups of coffee, we started walking towards Leidseplein. While walking between the shops, we caught sight of Masha in one of the stores. We had planned to meet with her a little later, but I guess might as well start now. Masha was explaining the reason she had to leave early yesterday night due to fatigue, was because of the ordeal she had at work. It would seem that at the store where she worked, someone had walked away with an item without paying. As she was helping that person out, she was deemed responsible. She had tried to clear it out, but I guess things were still a bit sketchy.

I had plans to write and upload more pictures at the Internet cafe off of Leidsestraat street. So while I did that, the two ladies went to the stores so Sheilla can do her last-day shoppings.

After I've done all the blog writing I was able to do, I decided to walk around the block while waiting to hear from the girls. I found a bookstore that was catered for English books. I looked around while trying to figure out what book would be good to buy to read in the plane, since I was done reading the book I brought, Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper. Then I remembered that I had finished the book by Douglas Adams, The Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy. I've been wanting to get at least one of the sequels, starting with The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. With my luck, I found a book that not only has that title, but 3 others. One book, four titles. The price was descent (although I later realized it was not after doing the currency conversion). I bought it anyway.

I finally met up with Sheilla and Masha, and we had lunch at a nearby sandwich restaurant. We also wanted to get away from being outside, since it was very windy. It had been very windy since we arrived in Amsterdam the second time. Too bad, because now we had to skip the canal cruise. I guess it's yet another reason to come back.

After lunch, we walked around some more, to stores mostly as the ladies were just hungry for fashion-passion. But after finally depleting our interest in looking at clothes, although I must admit that would only apply to myself, we decided to go back to our hotel. We said our final goodbyes to Masha. We wished her well with work and her "love". Then we headed to our hotel.

We made our final packing and last minute checks, and we waited for ibu Ety. She came shortly after we finished everything. We got into the car driven by the same guy who took us to our hotel in Amsterdam the very first time around, and that was the end for Amsterdam, the central area.

We arrived at ibu Ety's place to find that our room was reorganized a bit to provide more space. The airbed was there, as expected. There was more blankets now, so that was definitely a plus. We adjusted our packings with the luggages that we left behind at ibu Ety's place. She also suggested that we do our laundry there and then. We agreed as she didn't mind, but we didn't realize that the drying would take place at the guy's house, who drove us. To top it off, he came back later after they were dried, which surprised all of us. Needless to say, he was more than welcome to dine with us. I had mie goreng, or fried noodle, made especially by ibu Ety, requested by Lala. The dinner was as delicious as the first one we had about a month ago. Thus, a good ending to tonight, and to our last night.

Dinner with Shirin et al.

Tonight, we met up with Shirin and her boyfriend, Masha and Zjenja at Palladium. It's a restaurant in Leidseplein area. They were there first, however since Shirin and her boyfriend had never met Masha and Zjenja, they sat at separate tables of only a couple tables away. We came, and we united them. After all necessary introductions were squared away, we ordered our drinks and talked.

Lala and I did most of the talking, primarily about our honeymoon trip so far. Our experiences were compared to theirs, as they have gone to some of the cities we've visited. We also told them our ordeals with some of the cities when we were swindled. We mentioned our most and least favorite cities, even our most and least favorite restaurants. The most favorite restaurant would be Ristorante Diana in Vienna, Italy. The least being the overpriced café in Paris' Avenue de Champs-Elysées. Our most favorite city would be Prague, followed by Vienna as a close second and Vatican City as a close third. Least favorite would be Rome, due to it's disgusting litter found openly and the foul smell, such as urine. It was quite repulsive, really. The city's only redemption to us was their historical sites and buildings. FYI, we don't count Vatican City as part of Rome.

Masha was not feeling well. Apparently she had woken up really early in the morning and had to deal with issues at work. We didn't know what exactly, but we saw in her eyes that she desperately wanted to go home. She excused herself, and with her sister they said goodbye, goodnight and parted from us. We had made a promise to rendezvous tomorrow to make up for the limited time tonight.





After they have left, we turned our attention to Shirin and her boyfriend. Since they both knew Indonesian, we used some of it as we talked. Mine was much more limited than anyone, so I had to compensate with my English, which was not at all a problem. I was glad that everyone we've met so far had some knowledge of English such that I wouldn't have to keep quite. That would not have been fun since it felt like I wanted to say a lot of things. Meeting new people was fun. Meeting new and excitingly friendly people who are friends of Lala was awesome. And so we talked and talked, until we realized that it was almost midnight. They had to drive almost 2 hours back to their city, so we didn't want to impose on them staying late.

We went outside and decided to take some pictures.







We said our goodbyes, good lucks on our endeavors. They wished us the best on the rest of our honeymoon and our lives as married couples. We wished them good luck as well on life in general. It was nice, as I thought then, that we both have great friends.

Where art thou, Vero Moda?

In Berlin, just minutes before we boarded our train to Prague, Sheilla went into a Vero Moda store that was in the train station. There, she saw a bag "of her dreams". She immediately fell in love with it. The bag, she claimed didn't cost that much, and it was big, they way she liked it. However, Lisa suggested to get the bag in Italy, where she presumed would be better. Little did she know, there were no Vero Moda in any city we visited after that, not even in Paris. Thus, Sheilla had to find the bag she found in Berlin, somewhere in one of the Vero Moda stores in Amsterdam. There were about 3 or so that we were able to go to on foot. So today, "our" objective was to go to a Vero Moda and buy the bag.

We made it to Leidseplein, where we came across Bagels & Beans that Masha had told us during the time we were first in Amsterdam about 3 weeks ago. Since we haven't had our breakfast, we saw a good opportunity to give bagels a try.


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I had to admit, their bagels were great. I had one with smoked salmon, while Sheilla ordered one with sliced ham. As the pictures illustrate above, needless to say, we were satisfied.

With our stomachs filled, we were energized to scour through the streets of Amsterdam (particularly along Leidsestraat street) to find Vero Moda stores, and ultimately the bag.

We did find the Vero Moda stores, but we did not find the bag. And just like that, we knew that the bag found in Berlin, could only be bought in Berlin. Sheilla's instinct should had been followed. To compensate for not getting the bag, she went to a store called River Island and bought a pair of jeans shorts.

The day was still young, and dinner time was not quite so near. I had asked someone previously for the location of an Internet cafe. Luckily there was one off of Leidsestraat street. So I remained in there for about an hour to finish up the blog on Bordeaux and Paris. Meanwhile, Sheilla went to other shopping stores, hoping for a luck in finding a similar bag to Vero Moda's bag. After no success, she retired from shopping for the day. I accomplished what I wanted to do, which was to simply continue with the next part of the blog.

Museumplein and Hotel Heemskerk

When we arrived at Centraal Station, we immediately went to the taxi area just outside. Since we've been here quite a few time before in just during our trip alone, we were quite acquainted to the whereabouts of things. We needed to get our stuff that Masha had kept for us during our trip. We handed to her just before we left Amsterdam for Berlin. After we obtained it, we headed to our hotel, Hotel Heemskerk.


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Hotel Heemskerk was located in Museumplein area, where as the name suggested museums were about centrally located. The hotel itself felt a lot more like a bed & breakfast. It was once a rowhouse that was converted into a hotel. The house had a sense of old-ness yet comfy. The downside was that our room was on the 3rd floor, and they just didn't have an elevator. The staircases were a bit narrow and steep. The steps themselves were quite narrow. Thus, carrying our heavy luggages was in its own an exercise. Luckily, the front desk person, who was this tall, too-friendly Dutch man helped us by taking the heavier luggage.

Our room was called the blue room. It was so mostly because the wallpapers were of blue tint, and the bed comforter and pillow cases were blueish too. It did not matter how it was going to be anyway, since we've experienced relatively bad hotel rooms. Since Sheilla chose the hotel based on her taste, it did turn out decent. Moreover, our room had a decent view from the window. If only the weather was not cold and windy, we would had kept it open for the breeze.



After we had settled ourselves in, we decided to walk towards the city center. Since we were close to the museums which we had to go through anyway, we took the opportunity to take a few pictures. In particular, we saw the I a m s t e r d a m letter-art that looked pretty cool.













Then we continued on. We only went as far as Leidseplein, where they have lots of restaurants, and where we would meet Angie for dinner.


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We went to a Thai restaurant somewhere on a smaller street where, according to Angie, served one of the best Thai food. She was quite right. She asked questions about our trip around Europe. We told her stories in summary on each city. We also told her how we got swindled in Prague and Rome. She also told of her plans to travel to Prague and perhaps including Romania and Bulgaria. We chatted away till it was closing time.

When we got out, it had started raining. Lucky for all of us we had hoods on our clothes. So we headed back to Leidseplein where we went our separate ways. I knew that that would be the last time I saw Angie, and I believe Sheilla had that feeling too. It would be a long time till we would meet again, particularly since she had no interest in visiting the US. So we said goodbyes, hugged, gave kisses on cheeks, and basically stalling to put more time to spend together. But the rain came down still, and we were getting soaked. We took our respective trams, and that was that.

To Amsterdam! Back to where we began!

Today, we head back to Amsterdam, the first city of our wonderful trip, which was to be our last. We knew that there, we will be more aware than we were already that we would have to separate, again. We knew that the trip was nearing its end. We knew that we had to say goodbye. But we also knew that in the 3 weeks so far that we've been together, which was constant, 24/7, we managed to get along. This trip was a test to see how we can cope with each other. Some days were great. Some days was just ok. But there weren't any when we had bad moments. True, it was our honeymoon and thus our vacation. We didn't have to work. There were still many experiences we had to go through to discover if we'd get on each other's nerves. But that's ok. We couldn't wait. And this trip had just made our love much stronger.

We checked out of our hotel, while at the same time I purchased the Chinese food from Savasie, the restaurant we got our food from the night before. We got two orders to-go, which we would eat in the train. We then got our taxi, and we were on our way to Gare du Nord, or North Train Station, which served trains that travel north of Paris. The train itself was Thalys, which in my opinion was better than France's other superior train, TGV. The basis was that TGV did not provide any power plug while Thalys did. Thus, I wrote my blog in my computer, which actually were of the previous trip in Rome, while Sheilla read the Louvre book of their art collections.



Our train passed through Brussels, Belgium. Luckily we had decided to skip sightseeing in this city as it did not look too appealing up front from the train. In addition, the rain was not going to be enjoyable, especially if we had to drag our now-even-heavier luggages. I took a couple of pictures just to say that at least we were in Brussels.

High Priced Café

After Louvre, we decided to try out another Starbucks, this time located on the street of Champs-Elysées, formally named as Avenue des Champs-Elysées. Here, cinemas, cafés, and luxury specialty shops can be found.


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With that said, we found that a Grande Mocha at the Starbucks on this Avenue des Champs-Elysées cost 5 euros, which was approximately equivalent to $7.72 at that time. I claimed right there and then, that I had just bought the most expensive Grande Mocha ever.

At least that was Starbucks. Shortly after, we decided to eat dinner, since our stomachs began to growl excessively and loudly. Not wanting to travel far, we went into the nearest place to eat, which happened to be the same café we stopped by to get a crêpe with Nutella chocolate spread before we had our Starbucks. In the display case they had several types of paninis, all happened to look good, and each at a price of 5 euros. We also decided to sit in to eat. Upon looking at the menu, right away I noticed that the price for each panini rose to 7 euros. Astonished and a bit dumbfounded, I had to assume that the additional 2 euros meant for the service. Already hungry and tired, with the addition that it was cold, windy and raining outside, we went ahead to order 2 paninis. I ordered an orange juice, and Sheilla ordered a cup of tea, Lipton.

First of all, the paninis were not at all tasty. As a matter of fact, it was hard on some part, soggy on another part, and the meat just tasted refrigeration, as if they couldn't find anything and decided to use leftovers that dropped at the bottom of the fridge. A bit turned off and highly unsatisfied, we just had enough and ready to simply go home. We got the bill and were even more astonished. The prices were absurdly high. The 2 paninis, disgusting and distasteful came to 14 euros as expected. Surprisingly, a small glass of my orange juice cost exactly the same as 1 panini. Even more surprisingly, the tea of simply Lipton bag in a hot water cost 6 euros. To put into common understanding, the tea was around $9.25, while the orange juice and paninis were each $10.80. The most unbelievable was the tea, I thought. I couldn't argue much, because the menu was in front of us, and we had time to look at the items and prices. We decided to stay and order, therefore we were compelled to pay. To sum up, the dinner cost us 27 euros, or around $41.67. Absurd!

We headed home unhappily, mostly on the fact that some establishments just had the nerve to serve low quality food with triple the amount they ought to be. As we were near the hotel, I recalled seeing a Chinese restaurant around a block away. I asked if Sheilla would be interested in just seeing what they have. She was, and so we went there.


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The restaurant was called Savasie. The food they serve were mostly Chinese. The price, decently cheap. We ordered a 1-item combo consisted of fried rice and chicken. The cost, 5 euros. The food was plentiful, enough for two people. The taste, at least 20 times better than the paninis we had earlier. Had we restrained ourselves a little longer, we would've saved our money. I guess it was a lesson for us. Never grab something you see first. We were satisfied with our second dinner, which on the downside made us more full. Nonetheless, we were a bit more satisfied. Tomorrow, we planned, we would buy some more food from this Chinese food to take in the train for our breakfast.