Wind's Blowing in a Different Direction

Gentle reader, my plans have changed - Amsterdam will be my second trip after visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brasil!! The plans are still afoot and I will have much to tell you about it. I have been before and it's irresistible. I even have a small cage all my own there! Details to come shortly. I've not forgotten Amsterdam; I am small and my tale's longer than it should be. While I edit, I will tease you with some pics:

Boston or Bus(t)

I've taken the bus from New York to Boston twice. On on occasion, I was playing hooky from work (for a week). Working in a travel agency, I couldn't very well book a plane or train ticket or rent a car without risk of being caught. Pre-2oo1, the only questions from a bus company were "Destination?" and "Form of Payment?" In the second case, the trip was also last minute and the roundtrip bus fare was only $50. It was pretty fast, just 3 1/2 hours, including a stop in Hartford, CT and a rest stop at Wendy's. Similar time on the return. There was even a movie! More recently, bus services from New York's Chinatown (initially overcrowded vans) provided one way service for as little as $10 - $15. Beware - a well known expression among hamsters: "You get what you pay for!" The Chinatown services improved remarkably along with their popularity. Now you can get the same express service for as little as $2.50 roundtrip, including a movie! Megabus will offer this service beginning May 30th. Prices begin at $1 each way, when purchased in advance; the maximum one way cost is $14. The fee is 50 cents. Megabus (www.megabus.com) is a subsidiary of Coach USA: it also has low cost routes to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Toronto, Las Vegas, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Memphis, etc. You can find similar bargain routes in the U.K. - London to Scotland for just 1 quid!....For less than the cost of a latte, you can go see the Red Sox, hear great music at the Middle East, go rowing on the Charles, shopping on Newbury, and see great architecture in one of our oldest cities. So when you read those daunting news reports that the dollar is worth nothing, you can point to this. My fur is standing on end!

P.S. My boss did discover I wasn’t really out sick during my first Boston trip. It was 81 degrees in Boston that March, so we went to Provincetown. I came back with a tan.

More is coming about Amsterdam, including Jason Priestley, Zelka the Bulgarian, and the Red Light District. Lastly, for a real “trip” to Amsterdam, if you’re in NYC you must go see the Broadway rock musical Passing Stange. Have a great weekend!

Amsterdam revisited - Part I

I got my first passport in 1991 for a trip to Aruba. Yes, I know hamsters don't normally live this long - but I know of a zebra finch currently in its 8th year, so anything is possible. I didn't need the passport for Aruba, but it was a good occasion to have one (now Americans need passports to go anywhere - like everyone else - rightly so!). My friend John and I were told how friendly and beautiful the Arubans would be by our travel agent Debbie, who seemed to go into a trance when reminiscing about her trip to the island. We guessed the locals were really friendly and really beautiful. She exaggerated. People were friendly enough and lovely enough, I guess I didn't meet the same people Debbie did. Aruba wasn't really lush and green - the beach was lovely, water clear blue, it was windy. I loved the food, and......actually, I'm completely digressing. I had no intention of writing about Aruba at all - you've probably already been there! How this started is I noted the Dutch architecture of some hotels, and in the capital Oranjestad, and it made me think of seeing the real thing: Amsterdam! With my new passport it seemed the likely place to go next. I returned to New York I went back to Debbie the travel agent who was pleased by my good reports of a great stay on Aruba. I gave her updates about the hotel, beaches and shops for her future clients to benefit from. She was disappointed I hadn't met Paulo the waiter, or Derk the concierge at the Palm Beach Resort. I'm not sure why. We started planning my trip to Amsterdam! Lucky Hamster I, the flights were confirmed on standby via the friends/family program of my friend Patrick, a reservationist with Air Canada. We would be flying on Martinair, a Dutch airline. Sounded perfect, arriving in Holland on a Dutch airline. The vacation would begin in the sky (clearly I was dreaming - we all know planes are busses in the sky). The fantasizing travel agent wanted Pat and me to stay at Hotel Pulitzer. Indeed it is an amazingly luxe hotel. I promptly went to check it out online before discovering the internet didn't really exist yet - I'm always getting ahead of myself. I had to wait for mail from the tourist board with a brochure of hotels. After much thought and weighing possibilities - exhausting Debbie who asked me to come back when I was ready for Curacao - I selected Hotel Vijaya in the heart of the red light district. It's a Dutch/Indian owned hotel I discovered. I regret choosing it only for the name - people tended to snicker when I told them where I was staying. And this was years before the word vijayjay had been coined on Oprah or Tyra (or was it The View?). Hotel booked, and flight on standby I needed only to wait for summer to end before my September trip commenced. In the meantime, I was enlightened by other hamsters who'd already been to Amsterdam about all the fun I would have: the great sex waiting for me, the drugs, the cool music, the sex, the sex, the drugs.....Not to sound naive, but I really planned this because of the architecture, and museums. I'd read The Embarrassment of Riches. I wasn't going for sex, drugs, and rock and roll - wasn't I already living in New Jersey? I don't even do drugs, although the other two....Needless to say, by end of summer, I was as randy as half the others boarding this Dutch flying bus to Amsterdam.