It feels like only days ago that I was sitting in the Paris airport, trying to get my bearings to go meet my parents. I knew my mother would be hyperventilating about her poor baby girl riding the subway alone, and my dad would be laughing at her and thinking about books or ice creams or ladies with pretty legs (he does that).

It feels like a lifetime ago.

It's been a crazy trip. I'm down to my last five euros, just enough to buy a can of coke in this godforsaken airport. At least the wifi is free.

So.

Yesterday morning I woke up to a grey and rainy Amsterdam. I will say the city was crying because I was leaving, and not delve any deeper.

I'm glad I had had such good weather as it was.

What was I going to do? That was a good question. I'd hit all the major museums, and some of the minor ones. I even saw that stupid Bible museum.

So I started to wander without a lot of purpose. Found myself near the Old Church, right as it opened. And hey, the Museumkaart worked there, too! So in I went, if just to get out of the elements.

Rembants wife was buried there. She died when she wasn't much older than I am now.

The church was a bit run down. It hadn't been maintained well for a long time, but they were in the middle of restoring and getting things up to snuff.

But check out this huge and manly organ?

Seriously massive instrument. I was intimidated. It covered the entirety of one wall, almost floor to ceiling, except for a door underneath it.

The church got pretty badly stripped of its decorations and paint during the *muttermuttermuttermuttermutter*.

Okay! I can't remember. It was a religious shift, anyway, that looked upon so much decoration as frivilous and taking away from God's glory, or something. A lot of churches got their interiors painted flat white, and all the carvings pulled down.

I can't remember if this organ survived it, or was built after the crazy relaxed.

I stuck around there as long as I could bear. There was some dude doing really bad paintings in one section of the church. Maybe I just don't have an eye for modern art...I didn't take any pictures. It wasn't worth it.

Then I left. It was only around noon.

I decided, what the heck, I'd check out the New Church!

Unfortunately for all of you they didn't allow pictures, mostly because they had a special exhibition on about the Jewish religion.

I think I had to pay extra to get in, on top of Museumkaart, but it was only something like three euros.

The exhibition was interesting. Very thorough. They even had pieces of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. For reals! I'm not full of shit! They had four (I think) small shreds, about the size of paperback pages. They were, apparently, pages detailing how the temple would be built.

They were so delicate that they were kept in separate little room that was all hung around with heavy black curtains, and a woman at the entrance who would only let a few people in at a time.

After that, I was at a lost. It was barely past one. What was I to do?

I wandered around for a while. Found a shop that was closing down, and selling all it's clothes off for five euros, assessories for 2.50.

How could I not?

I bought a dress for myself (originally 130.00 euros) and a scarf (20.00 euros), together for 7.50. I like getting deals.

It was very cold out. I finally decided to take a canal tour.

You know those ticket shops, that all proclaim to have the cheapest tickets for all the major attractions?

Yeah, they're all full of shit.

They were all proclaiming a 'deal' of eleven euros, but I went directly to the boats to their little kiosk, and got a ticket for nine.

Go to hell, ticket sharpers!

The tour was nice. The captain was very friendly. He always made sure to slow down and point out good photo ops.

This is apparently the seven (I think) arched bridges. Maybe it was nine.

Doesn't matter much, since you can barely see more than three!

I got to see bits of Amsterdam that I didn't get to before.

The captain told us about the famous business man who opened this restaurant:

First he said: "No smiling. This is a sad story. I don't want to see any of you smiling."

And then he told us the story of this famous Chinese businessman who had a very successful restaurant in China. He either moved the whole building here, or he built a new one. I can't remember.

Anyway, it could seat SEVEN HUNDRED PEOPLE! Which was unheard of at the time.

Everybody was so excited. All sorts of dignitaries were invited. Seven hundred of them, in fact!

They had all sat down to dinner and were starting to eat when...the whole restaurant started to sink!

No smiling! This is a sad story!

They had to evacuate everybody! All the dignitaries in their fine clothing in the sinking restaurant! (Of course we all know Amsterdam is built on top of mushy ground, so lots of wooden poles are driven into the ground before things are built.)

Well, they investigated to find out what had happened. They went to the engineer who had calculated the capacity of the restaurant, and checked over his numbers and discovered what had happened.

When the Chinese engineer had calculated, he had calculated seven hundred CHINESE people.

But of course seven hundred DUTCH people showed up.

Now the restaurant seats five hundred.

HEY, NO SMILING.

Aw shit, I gotta board a plane! I'll see you all in Canada, eh!