After a long 2.5 months away from home, I finally arrived back safe and sound. Even the guy at customs gave me a nice smile with a warm “welcome back” as I innocently passed by with nothing to declare.

It’s weird though… when I woke up at 6:30am on Monday – and even the night before as I was walking about in Amsterdam – I got my second wind and I actually felt like I could travel for a lot longer again. I had that urge to go to a new country (not Canada) and explore the sites and culture of it. I guess I do have to leave some travelling left for my next trip though.

My first impression as soon as I arrived home was “wow, this house is big!” I’ve been accustomed to so many cramped corridors, hallways, and houses that I never knew exactly how large of a house I lived in. It sure is nice! I was pretty tired, hungry, and my ears were ringing badly as I’m the kind of guy that just can’t intentionally pop my ears even though I try real hard at times. Even today, I woke up with my left ear still not at par.
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I remember talking with Marie-Pier and Isabelle in Istanbul about what I would like to eat as soon as I get back home. One of them answered poutine (they’re both from Quebec City). I had told them that a big, thick juicey soy-sauce flavoured steak with white rice would be really nice. Either that or Japanese styled curry-rice.
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As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, what I saw sitting on the countertop was just to die for. It was a big, thick, juicey steak marinating in soy-sauce just waiting for me to devour it with all my might. Unfortunately there was no white rice to complement it but I lived without it.

So rather than going to sleep right away, I satisfied my appetite with little “tapas” here and there with my parents as we discussed both of our trips to Europe. After dinner I was greeted by my friends who welcomed me back with some homemade jam that they had made in Sudbury. I viewed some pictures of my parent’s meditteranean cruise, and called it a night… afterall, it was around 4am in Amsterdam time.

Now, as I sit in front of my computer with the sound of my laundry spinning in the background, I’m slowly clearing the mess I have made by unpacking my bags. My room is a pig stine. I haven’t even had the chance to organize my film rolls yet. I’m estimating somewhere between 25 -30 rolls in all. I need to get them all developed and digitized since I am planning a fairly large site based on my experiences in the past 2.5 months.

In any case, time for me to clear my room and do more cleaning…

Saturday August 21, 2004 – 11:15pm
It’s a Saturday night in Amsterdam and I’m here on the Internet. Go figure. I’m totally exhausted now after walking around the entire day. I think I’ve had just about enough of walking about the town. The weather here gets very chilly at night as well, which I found out late last night as I was drinking by the many canals flowing throughout the city.

It was a rather late start to the day as I managed to get myself out of the hostel by around 11am. It’s quite a large city this place, and today I walked far out of the core to see parts of Amsterdam that were not affected much by the smoke and sex shops that line the streets of the downtown area. It was a nice walk, although it had me beat by the time I arrived in the Museum district. I desperately had to go to the bathroom somewhere so I ended up paying 12.50 Euros to enter the Van Gogh Museum. It housed a lot of paintings by him, in addition to having a special limited time exhibition of Edouard Manet’s Impression of the Sea, and Van Gogh’s Impression of the sea. I spent about a good 2.5 hours there, which by the time I got out, was too late to go to the Heineken Brewery tour. I’ll leave that for tomorrow. Everything here is also very expensive. Museums, food, and even postcards. The cheapest postcards I found were at 0.95 euros. The one I ended up buying was 2 euros for some reason. Ouch!

I kept waiting and complaining about how high the price was to go from Amsterdam to London. Well, I bought my ticket today at 135 Euros since the prices actually don’t go down, but up the longer you wait. By tomorrow the price will most likely be at 160 Euros. So, had I been smart and bought the ticket about 2 or 3 weeks ago, I could have got it for 60 Euros. Another lesson learned.

I’m tired, and all this smoke is taking a toll on me. See you tomorrow…