Capricious Me

What is it about Chinese restaurants being located right next to … shall we say, unsavory shops of a sexual nature?

I think I walked through the red light district today right after visiting a huge church. Location is everything, I suppose. I was walking through a street with a few Chinese shops and restaurants (Amsterdam Chinatown is in that area), when I noticed quite a few shops unabashedly advertising their wares. Turning the corner and then noticed that the uncovered windows had STOOLS by them. So I turned around and walked through an alleyway back the way I came. It was an interesting alleyway, with lots of similar windows and the occasional scantily clad woman.

Anyway. I started out the day with a visit to the Amsterdam Hermitage, where I saw lots of paintings by Matisse, Picasso, and their peers. Not much besides that… despite the size of the building. After that I walked to Waterlooplein flea market and got myself some fries with mayonnaise.

My next stop was the Dutch Resistance Museum, across from a zoo. It was a really awesome setup with lots of props and audio. Unfortunately, there were tons of little boys running around being loud and annoying. What’s interesting about the Dutch resistance, to me, at least, is that there was a lot of church encouragement from both Protestants and Catholics to resist and even to help hide the Jews. This is in stark contrast to the churches in Germany, according to the book I’m reading (Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust) in which churches actually protested when the Nazis wouldn’t let them use the swastika as a symbol anymore.

From there, I walked to the Hortus Botanicus, where I saw a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Very neat.

Next, I headed over to the tulip museum, which was actually just one room recounting the history of the tulip. From there, it was a quick walk to Nieuwe Kerk, a huge church across from the Royal Palace (currently surrounded by scaffolding and construction and closed on Mondays). After that is when I started wandering around and found the red light district.

Finally, I went to the Anne Frank house. It was a pretty depressing tour…

Tomorrow is souvenir hunting! And then the day after is my day trip to Brussels.

Tonight, I shall be watching the opening ceremonies and making crepes. :)

Earlier this week, I made quite a few using prosciutto, serrano ham, cheese, lemon juice, nutella, bananas (not all at the same time). Tonight, I add mozzarella, basil, and tomato. I’ve been planning the basil, tomato, prosciutto, mozzarella for a while… I hope it does not disappoint.

Today was puzzleday. The day was so awesome. The puzzle creators and people planning the event were all dressed up in costumes. Among the attendees, several Star Trek crew, a grunt (from Halo), Master Chief, a flower/vines creature (mother earth?), Darth Maul, a Jedi knight, Neo (from The Matrix), a cardassian… Oh, the costumes did not disappoint.

When we were at the closing ceremonies, the author of the puzzle or a representative would explain how to solve each puzzle. One of the authors was… KEVIN LITWACK. From my high school! I remembered then that Lily had told me that he was at Microsoft and I’d confirmed that there was a Kevin Litwack working there. I didn’t know him very well, but Lily and he were on debate team together.

Pain Train Synchronetics (5 pts plz!), my team, came in third today (we were the 3rd team to complete the metapuzzle) but we had the highest overall score and solved every puzzle but one (which is at least 2 more than any other team, including the teams that solved metapuzzles before us) so I was really pleased. As a prize, we each got a little star trophy with a hologram of a shooting star that says, “Third Place – Lieutenant” and a Mars Mission Lego set and a handshake from Master Chief. (The theme was space related.) The 1st and 2nd place teams got pretty much the same prizes.

Puzzlehunts are fun. I wish they would bring college puzzle challenge to UCD, but I doubt that we’ll be so lucky.