v.k. visits (part 1)

v.k. came to visit for a whirlwind long weekend of hilarious times. theme songs for the weekend: flo rida's "right round" and lady gaga's "poker face" (which mysterious did not play at all on mtv when v.k. was here, but otherwise plays all the time).

saturday:

v.k. arrived early on a saturday. after i convinced here that she would be jet-lagged and that running around amsterdam on saturday could result in us curling up under a bridge and napping for about 6 hours, she came to meet me at the hague. we got her settled in and then promptly napped. we got up, did some hague-walking around. commented on how like victoria this place is. we headed into de paas, the bar two doors down from my apartment, where i make everyone go. we found seats inside. the talk: our lack of mans and yet our amazingness. seated beside us was a group of about 8 guys, one of whom was dressed like robin hood, complete with a chapeau (that another friend was wearing). all while we were sitting there, they kept looking over at us. i felt like they wanted to talk. we finally asked them about the robin hood costume. turns out it was a bachelor party for their friend. well then! apparently, it is a typical thing to make the bachelor dress up in a costume, like robing hood, for instance. they surrounded us and took pictures of us with the bachelor, making him sit between v.k. and me and asking us to get close. essentially, draping us over the bachelor. so, some of the bachelor's friends were cute -- one was hottt. but of course we got no time with them. anyway, we were invited to catch up with them later on the plein, where they were going post-drinks. sounds like a wild, raucous night, right.

wrong. i lamed out and v.k. and i returned to my apartment, where we gorged on junk food and watched from start to finish the eurovision song contest, to watch norway's triumph. ah yes, a visit to the hague always ends up with me and my visitor in my apartment watching tv. sad, sad. i apologize to v.k. for subjecting her to my typical saturday night.

sunday:

but sunday, we were amazing. we left early, and went to keukenhof, which is the netherlands' version of butchart gardens. it's a tulip-y delight. the day was overcast with off and on spitting rain and sunny periods. a typical day in the netherlands. we had the world's friendliest bus driving to take us from leidan to keukenhof. best keukenhof highlight, beside the flowers of course -- the south indian "bollywood-type" production we witnessed. what we witnessed & heard was: a song that could have been sun by alvin, simon and theodore (the chipmunks) and a guy repeatedly jumping off a banister doing a spin in the air and landing with a thud, arms out in front of a glamourous sari-clad woman. the woman was pretty. the guy was beastly. there is a group of baffled dutch people and an embarrassed me watching. me embarrassed lest everyone think i'm part of the shooting. egad. other highlights included: weird cafeteria-type lunchtime dining & walking on man-made "stones" on a pond. highlight also include about 7000 photos of beautiful flowers. amazing. the last highlight, which was perhaps the highlighty-ist was when we stopped in one of the pavilions to listen to an old-man choir. we waited for them to sing a song in dutch. it didn't happen at least not while we were there. anyway, we were standing up against a planter. as we decided to leave, a strange dutch ladies (who had been staring at us off and on) stopped me, telling me that v.k. had that yellow stuff that's inside flowers on her hoodie. we stopped and i tried to brush it off. she grabbed v.k. by the arm and said ominously, "you'll NEVER get it out." huh? thanks for nothing.

on the way back to the hague, we decided to check out leidan and grab some food there. much to our surprise, sunday was the date of the leidan marathon. amazing. we kicked around leidan for a bit & made our way back to the hague to grab dinner at garoeda (delish indonesian food). post-garoeda, we found a bar (supermarkt) with live "music" (using that word loosely). the patrons of supermarkt were wholly bizarre: first of all there was a guy we nicknamed "mr. miyagi" -- he seriously looked like pat morita. then, there was the woman in the tiny, silver lame dress, who was seated on a stool and had no apparent awareness of the length of her dress and the peep show she was giving everyone. the crowd was ranged in age from 17 to 67. we had G&Ts which meant that were each handed a glassful of gin & a small-sized bottle of tonic. i thought i would pass out from the fumes alone.

made our way home, in anticipation of our big day in the big city on monday.

monday:

we woke up late. grabbed breakfast en route to Den Haag HS station and got into amsterdam a couple of hours later than we'd hoped. two items on the agenda: cheese & chocolate. v.k. is the most generous traveller i know. she bought a tonne of chocolate for friends at work. my friends are lucky if they get a post card or a magnet. we went to puccini bonbons (something like that) for chocolate. across the street was reypenauer (something like that) cheese shop. gouda & goat cheese. strictly. then we went to this amazing cheese shoperie called "kase kamer" (cheese room). there we had many samples and bought much cheese. we wandered around with our purchases eventually stopping for a snack (i introduced v.k. to stroopwafels, a delicious treat that i will miss when i leave -- two flat waffles with caramel inside. delicious!) we gave up on going to the opera (we'd spent considerable time trying to find things to do for our evening in amsterdam). we then went on a boondoggle search for a place to have dinner. we hit one of the streets a guidebook said was good for dining. we weren't really impressed by anything we saw. we finally decided to check out an italian restaurant that had rave reviews. we walked past the window and a surly man sitting at a table just inside the restaurant gave us a very odd, very unfriendly look. forget you, assface. so we continued our quest. we headed south and got to the pijp area of amsterdam, having again found a place in the guidebook that sounded promising. we finally found it (after a slight mishap where i thought the restaurant might have closed down but we were on the wrong street). we got to the spot where the restaurant was in existence, but it looked closed. we sat down on the bench outside, dejected. not yet starving, but coming close to real, gnawing hunger. we saw a guy park his bike and go inside, returning with a pizza. we asked if the restaurant was open. it was. hooray.

we went in search of a place to get a drink before we would head back to the restaurant (it was a homey italian place) for dinner.

we wandered and meandered. and found a place called cafe de punt, which looked like a good place for a drink. the bartender was a very young man, who looked like he could be about 14. we settled in with wine and started what would become a quite humourous night.

to be continued.