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Archive for March, 2010
Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club at Paradiso
3678 days
Last Friday night in Amsterdam Jess and I were privvy to something pretty cool. We had booked tickets to see Phoenix months ago when we were still in Australia. This was a concert that we definitely wanted to see!
In true Jess and Jase style, we arrived at the venue, Paradiso earlier than needed. Entering the main concert hall we were very impressed – Paradiso is housed in an old church that was built in the 19th century, and while it has been refurbished to be suitable for concerts, it still retains a lot of it’s former charm.
Since we were there early we took prime position at the front of the stage and before long the support act, Two Door Cinema Club played. We stumbled across them well before we bought the tickets to the concert, and when we found out they were the support act it was a sweet little bonus. It was great to hear them live and see a solid performance out of them.
Phoenix followed up with an absolutely phenomenal show. To me, everything was perfect. The music was spot on, their “act” was top quality, and the light show just sealed the deal. To sound as good as their album while playing in front of a few hundred people is something they should be proud of. Much screaming, clapping and whistling saw Phoenix return to the stage for one of the longest encores I’ve seen. Initially vocalist Thomas Mars and guitarist Christian Mazzalai returned to play a few very touching covers, before Thomas told everyone that it was their bass player – Deck D’Arcy’s birthday. The crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to him and then the full band put on the second half of their show.
Special mention goes out to their drummer Thomas Hedlund who looked as though he was putting every last bit of his energy into the show. His intensity on the drums was just another reason why this was one of the best concerts I have been to.
Backpacking in Amsterdam
4679 days
by Jase
in The Netherlands
We leave Amsterdam after a decent 7 day stay. It has been everything we had expected and everything we hadn’t. In the same city, we have been out of our comfort zone, relaxed, exhausted and surprised.
We arrived by coach from Brussels and immediately made our way to the hostel, Hotel My Home. I can’t understand the differences between the name hostels and hotels anywhere in this world, but for the sake of this post it’s a hostel. Our dorm was probably the most average one we had stayed in so far, but everything was clean so it was fine.
To kick off our time in Amsterdam we walked down to Westerpark. Westerpark is a decent sized park on (as the name suggests) the western side of Amsterdam. On the walk we passed numerous coffeeshops, restaurants, bars, supermarkets and most importantly bike shops. As it turns out, I don’t think we could have stayed in a better location. It was central to just about everything.
The first part of our stay was spent fulfilling the almost mandatory objectives that a backpacker has in Amsterdam. On our first night we went to a coffeeshop, bought the things that you buy at a coffeeshop and then retired to our dorm. As you can imagine it was an early night for us and probably the best sleep I have ever had in a hostel. The second night we went on a pub crawl, and long story short the next day was even worse than my Warsaw hangover experience for the both of us. Later on in the week we visited the sex museum for a lot of laughs and a bit of a shock, followed by the red-light district to check out the girls, and a few men dressed up as girls. Hilarity ensued.
That was it – we had ticked everything off of the list aside from Anne Frank’s house. We thought about going, but to be honest it feels as though we are in Holocaust information overload right now.
Doing the usual backpacker thing was fun, but what made our stay better was seeing and doing as the locals. We visited Westerpark a few times, and yesterday we visited Vondelpark too. We would just walk for a bit, then sit down and watch the thousands of people ride past on bicycles, families playing on the grass, dogs playing until they fight eachother and then playing again, and all of the other things that happen when you take the time to sit and watch. It was relaxing, but it was interesting too.
During our time in central Amsterdam we were able to check out a few local bike stores as well. I love the utilitarian bikes they ride over here. Bikes are a sport for some, but they are a mode of transport to almost everyone. We also had the chance to visit a sauna called Sauna De Keiser, on the recommendation of a travel website aimed more at those looking for something different. It was different alright – it certainly took us out of our comfort zone, but it was a great experience and was actually really good for our skin after being outdoors in a winter that our bodies aren’t used to.
On the weekend, we moved to a hotel a bit further out from the city. It was more expensive than the hostel, but unfortunately we couldn’t find any rooms for the weekend at any other reputable hostels. It’s amazing how you are treated sometimes when you rock up at a hotel with a backpack, despite paying the same nightly rate as the guy that arrived in a Mercedes taxi. Our stay was ok – the bonus was that we had some more privacy, but it didn’t feel as homely as the hostel did, and we certainly weren’t as welcome. Who would have thought that we would both end up feeling more comfortable in an old hostel, as opposed to an almost brand new “dutch design hotel”.
It’s one of the many suprises that we had while in Amsterdam.
Jess and I are both fairly liberal people I suppose and maybe we view the city differently to many others. In the lead up to our trip many people talked up Amsterdam as if it was the sort of place you to go get laid, take drugs and go home. In a city where marijuana is decriminalized and prostitution is legal – it can just sound like a party town. While you could party here all year round, there is nothing stopping you from doing the same in at least half of the other cities we have visited.
While many people do head to Amsterdam to have some fun, we found it incredibly safe. The city is clean, the people appear healthy and the country as a whole appears to us as a very intelligent one. Apparently the sale of marijuana brings in $4 billion a year through tourism to Amsterdam, and I’d imagine a fairly reasonable amount from the prostitution too. Aside from the regular whiff of a tourist smoking a joint, this city is as normal as every other city. If anything, the major differences are in my eyes positive ones.
With all that said, it’s been a bit of a long 7 days and we are both happy to be moving on. Amsterdam leaves us with many memories, but it’s not a place we feel the need to return to any time soon. Not without a bike anyway!
Brussels: Beer, piss and other surprises
2Before arriving in Brussels we had been told by many that Brussels was a boring city and to avoid it at all costs. People made it sound like a ghost town. Being the capital of the European Union, websites and our guide book made it sound like a city where business and politics take place, and not much else.
Nevertheless, travelling through Brussels was the cheapest way for us to get to Amsterdam from Rome, so we thought we would spend a few nights there to check it out. What we didn’t realise is that the accommodation prices would just about negate any savings we made from the cheap flight. In the end we stayed at a place called Hotel de Fierlant for €69 per night. This was the cheapest we could find aside from staying in a place with permanent bed bugs or an hour away by bus.
We arrived by coach from Charleroi airport at Gare du Midi station in Brussels around 7pm and began to look for clues as to where we were heading. Our walk to the hotel was only short but wasn’t through the classiest of areas. At times we didn’t feel welcome but we never really felt unsafe.
We checked in, opened the windows to cool the place off (the hotel was always boiling), and spent the night planning any miscellaneous accommodation for the rest of the trip. We retired to the TV, watched Police Academy (the first movie we have seen in English since Singapore) and went to sleep.
The next day we tried to check out all of the local sights. We dropped by Grand Place, a square surrounded by (as the name suggests), very grand buildings. We spent a while in the centre just talking and looking around, constantly finding architectural details worth making a big deal about. Once we were done we walked through the shopping district, including St. Hubert’s Gallery, just taking our time and seeing what was popular in Belgium.
We had some hot chips in a square nearby, watching a skateboarder and some people do parkour (similar to freerunning). We spent the rest of the day doing more of the same – walking, sightseeing and relaxing.
On the way back to our hotel we wanted to see the Mannekin Pis, Brussel’s most famous statue. It’s basically just a boy pissing, and the locals love him. As we were walking in his direction we found a bunch of men all dressed up in royal looking costumes, all chanting and playing drums and trumpets. They walked us and everyone else who was following down to the Mannekin Pis, where he was wearing the same costume as them. Before long the little boy was pissing beer into cups that the locals were gladly drinking. It was one of those things that happen only by chance, so it was great that we stumbled across it.
The day after we had planned a relax in the park but it was raining. Instead we checked out a few of the local beers in some of Brussels’ pubs. It gave us some time once again to just catch up and talk about everything. Life goals, friends and family back home and abroad, and of course the travel we are yet to do.
We returned to the hotel, found some directions for our hostel in Amsterdam, and packed our bags ready for the early morning we had today.
I don’t know if this city knows what it wants to be. As I mentioned, it has a reputation to be a boring city due to it’s political history, however the population that we saw appeared to be quite young. The city is dirty in a way similar to that of Paris and, like Berlin, it appears that it was planned for a much higher population than currently lives there – many buildings are vacant, with some completely vandalised.
All up though, we enjoyed ourselves in Brussels, I just doubt we will return in the near future due to the price of accommodation.
Our Roman Holiday
2Rome really surprised us. It wasn’t as dirty or tacky as we expected, we didn’t have to fight off the gypsies like we thought, and there was a totally unexpected, beautiful central park (Villa Borghese) that we loved spending time in. All in all, Rome was a great destination for another short trip.
We arrived at Rome Termini and had an easy 6 minute walk to our accommodation, Macao Rooms, where we were greeted by the owner. We stayed in a pleasant bed and breakfast that we luckily didn’t have to share with any other guests, so it essentially felt like staying in an apartment. The location of the room was in perfect walking distance to many of the attractions and, for us, in walking distance to all the attractions of Rome. On our first day we just explored the local area, including the Villa Borghese which was not too far up the road.
Day 2 started slowly as we made use of the free internet to try and get ahead in our booking of accommodation for our next few destinations. Unfortunately our sightseeing was further delayed by a trip to the Australian Embassy as we had learned that we had not been taken off the electoral roll, despite filling out forms in January, and needed to try and organise something to not be fined for not voting in the upcoming State election.
After a bit of mucking around we were on our way to the Spanish Steps to meet our friend Chad, an American studying in Italy who we met at a hostel in Vienna. He had kindly agreed to tour us around the city. The tour was a lot of fun and it was nice to have some extra company for the day too. Chad was able to share some of the information he has been learning about Italian history while studying abroad, and this made for a more interesting tour than we could have done ourselves. We saw all the famous Ancient Roman sites including the Colosseum and Roman Forum, and of course many fountains, statues and churches too. My favourite site of the day was, hands down, the Pantheon. It was so beautiful, highly decorated, well designed and well presevered – a very impressive building indeed. After saying our goodbyes to Chad at the Trevi Fountain, another amazing attraction, we made our way back to our room to have dinner and rest our tired feet from the day’s walking.
Another full day meant we were able to take our time walking from our accommodation to the Vatican City. As we headed up the road to Saint Peter’s Square a dozen tour guides flocked to us like seagulls to hot chips, trying to convince us to pay for a tour or express entry into the basilica. Of course we said no to them all, I didn’t really see the point of paying for something that has free entry, and the line moved quite quickly considering to volume of people, the metal detectors and the x-ray bag scans. The fuss outside was definitely worth the effort as the interior of the basillica was just amazing. In my opinion it’s magnificence is only rivalled by Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice. I coud not believe how detailed every inch of the place was, and it was just enormous! After soaking in the sunshine and having a snack break in the square we made our way back to our accommodation via Castel Sant’Angelo. The afternoon saw us once again enjoy the sunshine at Villa Borghese before we went out for dinner and admired the Trevi Fountain at night.
We have really enjoyed our time in Rome. The relaxed pace, sunshine and constant surprises have made it a great 3 days. To my surprise, Jason has even said that, while different, it is on par with how much he enjoyed Vienna.
1 Day in Florence
0We only had two nights in Florence, and only one of the days were really useable – the day we arrived we made the 2.5km walk to our accommodation and finally had time to stop and think about the family we had just left, and today we had a train departing at 9:13am.
Nevertheless I think Florence was another very successful short visit. Yesterday we left our comfortable bed and breakfast and began our walk back to central Florence. From the centre everything was an easy walk away (for us anyway), and the warm weather meant we were able to walk through the city without jumpers, although the locals still managed to dress in more clothes than we did in Stockholm.
As with most cities, the major attractions come with an inflated entry fee, however we only had one day so there was no point. In fact our somewhat “frugal travel” is a lot of fun for the two of us as we usually end up seeing things that aren’t in the guidebooks and crowded by tourists.
While viewing the Orsammichele from the outside we saw many people paying to visit the church, yet when we walked around the corner we saw an entrance to a building across the road that offered free admission to a display on the second floor. We climbed the stairs, crossed the road via a walkway and entered the Orsammichele. Inside were numerous statues, all very impressive, not to mention the view that we also had of the Florence rooftops.
We made our way through the busy yet skinny streets, stopping frequently to see the famous sites along the way. The Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Basilica di San Lorenzo, Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Ponte Vecchio and so on.
Finally we had made our way to Fiume Arno – a river that makes it’s way through Florence. We had been told that there was a good view of Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, and we were not misled! With the sun shining we sat outside on a bench and watched the other tourists walk by for about an hour. At one stage a Japanese couple even arrived in a chauffeur driven Bentley for wedding photos in front of the view. Perhaps a little bit more of an extravagant honeymoon than us!
In the early afternoon we made our back to the centre via the scenic route. If anyone is ever looking for something to do in Florence I suggest walking along Viale Galileo Galilei. The road was one of the nicest we had seen, dotted with trees the entire length, and provided views of both city and “country” Florence, perhaps providing an insight of what country Tuscany would be like.
We returned to our accommodation via the supermarket, picked up some supplies and cooked dinner. Exhausted yet satisfied it was an early night, all packed and ready to leave in the morning.
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