Amsterdam to Paris

Last night we went for a stroll through the Red Light District, this required us to catch a bus not a tram, but it was a good practice run for us as this was the bus we had to catch to get to Central Station in the morning.

The district is a maze of lots of little streets, with heaps of restaurants and shops intermingled with tall windows surrounded by red lights, and guess what, there are scantily clad women in the windows. Behind them is their workroom with workbench and in one I saw stains all over the sheets. Marty commented that it couldn’t be what I thought it was because they would have to use condoms, but I reminded him that we weren’t in Australia anymore and that may not be the law over here.

We stopped in for a drink at a local and Marty didn’t notice the bar tender wash his used glass in a trough of water before filling it with beer. Of course once he had finished the beer & I told him, we quickly left that one.

We stopped for a piece of pizza, yuk, worst pizza I have ever tasted, couldn’t eat it. Then we wandered past a massage shop, and it looked like a massage place not the other kind. So I stopped in for a shoulder massage while Marty found a cleaner establishment to have a hopefully untainted beer. The massage was very good done by an Asian woman, but unlike Asia where you pay about $5, this cost 20 Euro (about $25), but what the heck, we are on holidays.

This morning we were up really early, packed & cleaned up and made our way in the dark, to the Train Station. I had booked & paid for this leg of our trip a few months ago so was feeling very pleased with myself that I was so organised. Well that got shot out of the water. When I went to the counter to obtain our etickets, it turned out that we could only get those tickets from Brussels. Well there was $166 down the drain. Oh well, we had to get to Paris, so paid 263 euro (about $328) to get another 2 seats. We had to change trains in Brussels, so would have liked to have had the time to go and abuse someone for the stuff up, but only had 15 minutes between trains.

Its always stressful having to find platforms & trains in a country where everything is in another language, but we rush around like mad things till we find what we need, then take a big breath and relax when we have made it safely onto our next leg. I will say though, that even though they speak another language, most people speak English & everything is announced in Dutch and English & even sometimes in French. They are not the friendliest people but they are all willing to help when asked.

So here I am on the train from Brussels to Paris, updating my diary.  Looking forward to meeting the 2 gay blokes that run our next B&B called fittingly ‘A Room In Paris”. This train is certainly a new experience, more like a plane ride. Big seats, drop down table, power point to use my laptop, and a bar! What more could one ask for when travelling between countries. Supposed to have free WiFi too but as yet I haven’t been able to access it.