One Filly Travels

  Paris at night               Again, another day and night in Paris.   Still raining on and off.  Cold and rainy.  Today is Tuesday.  This is the start of the Rick Steves 13-day M Way Tour.               The morning started as usual---get my cappuccino, have my American breakfast of eggs and bacon, maybe toast today instead of the croissant.  But today is different. I am waiting to change from my standard room with a double bed and five huge pillows to a twin room with a new roommate.               I met Julie while she was eating her breakfast.  We exchange niceties and I went to unload my bags in our new shared room.  Julie is from Chicago and has traveled a lot, solo.  This is her first Rick S...

                                                            Arc de "under construction".                                                    How the Arc looked at one time.                                              How it looks now.                                              The  obelisk  and some other winged angel                 ...

Wishing I was in Rouen         I was tired, discouraged, and on the verge of tears while traveling from London to Amsterdam. I decided the pace I set for myself was too much since I needed to map out my transportation and confirm my next night or two stay. I was getting worried that traveling between Amsterdam and Rouen was too confusing by changing trains and not being able to avoid Paris. So, I cancelled my little Airbnb by the Seine in Rouen where I was planning to veg for a few extra days and settled on booking my “tour” hotel in Paris for an extra five days. Ugh, not what I really wanted to do but here I am, sitting in the Paris hotel bar lobby waiting for my Rick Steve’s tour to begin in five days. Would Rouen be a little bit more walkable and smaller? Probably. But I will make the best of the changes.        Paris. Instead of the train, I opted for an Air France flight into Charles De Gaulle airport. Faster and I wouldn’t h...

Cornbread started the graffiti movement in the 1960's. Artist in action. There are more women than you would think that are muralists. the series of pictures showing 3-D art. Standing in front of 3-D glasses, looking at picture without 3-D glasses, looking through one side of glasses then the other side---seeing two different images. Sticker Tagger.

I was so pleased that I took the initiative and walked all the way to Centraal Station with a small break for breakfast---at a Dutch pancake house. I caught the free ferry to Nord (NDMS) side and stayed all day. My aim was to go to the Straat Museum of modern art, which in this case means—street art. At the Straat, I learned about the history of graffiti, the different types, and some (in)famous names associated with the “art”. According to the Straat, graffiti began in the 1960’s, in Philadelphia, by a tagger named “Cornbread”. As a side note in my opinion, graffiti began way before then, by the boys who would carve their name into trees with a heart and write their aimed-loves initials. The tools may have been different, but the idea is the same. Graffiti soon was used as a visual demonstration for the Vietnam war in the later 1960s. Soon after, taggers used their initials, crew names, and icons to identify themselves and their territory (hence the ugly vandalism we see all o...

            I am more relaxed in Amsterdam since I don’t feel as rushed by staying two full days here, I can stroll (quickly) and linger in various places.  I can duck in and out of shops that I find interesting.              What I have noticed is the different languages spoken by the people who surround me.  And yet, when I ask a question, they immediately adapt and respond in English.  Of course, many times I am apologizing for something----with a smile---the universal language. You can’t just be a looky-loo!             With so many people surrounding me, there is no one to have a conversation.  The last good conversation, albeit short, I had was in London with Julia.  And I paid for that tour.  My hotelier, well at least one of them, was ver...

Sue warned me before I left the US to “Look left” when crossing streets in London.  You know, because the cars drive on the other side of road from the U.S.  In London and if you don't look the right way--SPLAT.  It was fairly easy to not get hit by a car in that there were warning signs painted on the road to either “look left” or “look right”.   Now in Amsterdam, which is the city of bikes, I have only almost got ran over about 100 times. Maybe more that I didn’t know of.  The cyclists are very good at dodging us tourists.  And, everyone walking has their face in their phone, most likely using Google Maps or GPS to navigate through the busy town.   Besides that, the streets are cobbled and uneven making walking with Google even more hazardous.  You have to move quickly to cross a street when 10 cyclists are headed toward you. And don’t forget to look both ways.   The day I arrived in Amsterdam, I...