July 30, 2016- Rest. Relax. Repeat

This morning we woke up and went downstairs to the Wave Lounge in the hotel for breakfast. As a Platinum Starwood Member, Bill can choose extra points per night, free breakfasts each morning, or a free gift which was a luggage tag. Bill chose the free breakfasts. It was a huge breakfast buffet with everything from smoked anchovies and olives, to meats, cakes and doughnuts, croissants, scrambled eggs, crepes, fruits, granola and yogurt, nuts, smoothies, juices, and fruit infused waters. Per person it is 33 Euros (about 49$ Canadian at our current exchange rate). It was pretty good, but Bill and I never would have paid 100 bucks for it.

April caught the morning sun rising from our room

April caught the morning sun rising from our room

Our breakfast, compliments of SPG

We went back to the room and dressed in our swimsuits and went down to the Bliss Spa area where there is a small pool with nice lounge chairs and less people. It's an infinity pool that looks out over the view of Barcelona and the beach (always packed with people, even in the morning and into the evening). We warmed up by the pool on our comfortable lounge chairs and then went for a refreshing dip in the pool, swimming right up to the edge (it's glass so you can even go underwater and see through the view of the city, albeit blurry from being underwater).

The lovely, warm Catalonian sun.

April enjoying the infinity pool 

Bill enjoying the infinity pool

We returned to our chairs and ordered two salads for lunch. April's was a quinoa salad and Bill's was a falafel salad. April's salad again had arugula or as they call it in Britain, rocket. It seems to be the kale of Europe. But we think kale is a better salad material. Maybe it just doesn't grow well here. Neither salad was that great.

We spent some more time in the sun, reapplying sunscreen after we took another dip. Eventually, the tall tower of the hotel blocked the sun from the pool in the mid afternoon and we went back to our room to shower off. Bill had a snooze, while April caught up on her travel journal.

We wanted to check out the club at the top of the W Barcelona, Eclipse, to which we had a free pass, so we went to dinner later than usual, almost 9:00 pm, which is of course early by southern European standards. The restaurant was basically empty until past 9:00 pm when people slowly started to filter in. When we left the restaurant at 10:45 pm it was jumping (and it's Saturday). We had prawns and tuna tataki as a starter, we shared monk fish and sea bass as mains, and Bill had cactus sorbet in a fruit soup for dessert, while April had chocolate brownies in chocolate sauce with spicy chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream. Everything was excellent. The Spanish really know how to cook seafood. We've noticed that the service in this hotel is absolutely excellent. The training program must be superb.

All dressed up for dinner

April before dinner with her new scarf

Appetizer: tuna tataki and prawns with peach gazpacho 

Monk Fish

Sea Bass

Chocolate bliss and cactus sorbet in a blood orange soup

We went back to the room and worked on the blog and killed time, so that we wouldn't be at the club, Eclipse, before the really good people watching began. FYI this is considered "research" when you're a writer.

We had to go down to the lobby and see the woman who guards the separate elevator that goes up to the 26th floor where the club is. She looked at our free pass and gave us each a plastic wristband that looked like a Euro Trash version of our hospital bracelets back home. We bought a sparkling water each and sat down in the EDM side of the club (the other side, R&B, looked busier and was smokey). There was almost no one there at 11:45 pm when we arrived. People slowly filtered in, but it was not very busy and almost no one was dancing. Most people just sat around or stood around in groups with the occasional lame dancer. The music was disappointing. We waited for 1:00 am which is when Google said the crowd peaks there. But it just sort of increased somewhat and stayed lame. We went over to the R&B side and tried to dance to one song but it was packed and we were being jostled. And we were like "I'm too old for this shit, I'm out." We had to take the separate elevator back down to the lobby and then get on one of the other ones to go back up to our room. Not what we expected from one of the "hottest" clubs in Barcelona, but the view was pretty. The DJs in the club were just not that creative or good at mixing or song selection.

Poppin' bottles at da club...

Under the blue lights of the Eclipse night club

A video survey of the crowd

July 29, 2016- AMS to FRA to BCN, Our First Day in Barcelona

We awoke at the ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. after less than 4 hours of sleep. We finished packing, had our breakfast in our room, and went and checked out. They removed a breakfast from our bill that we had in fact never ordered or consumed and was a mistake. Other than that, the bill was accurate. They asked for our feedback. We said that we loved the location of the hotel and it’s safe and comfortable and quiet, but the cleaning really left something to be desired. We noticed that the cleaning in our room wasn’t done very thoroughly and they broke a glass a couple of times and instead of replacing it, they’d leave it out in the hallway on the floor. Then we’d have to call down for a glass from the front desk. And they didn’t replace our Kleenex another day. And of course there was the weird electric toothbrush in a glass of water day. But all in all, we’d probably stay there again.

They called a taxi for us and the fellow was there right away. He was very pleasant and chatted with us as he drove us to Schiphol Airport and we discussed polar bears, the north pole, and other important facets of Canadian life.

Bill found the PwC office on the way to the airport.

He dropped us off at the Lufthansa departure section. We had checked in online, but the machines there are only for check in and not for printing baggage tags like in Canada, so we had to get in line with everyone anyways. We sent our bags away and we went through security. April always gets harassed back home and even here, she got the pat down of a lifetime right after being in the screening machine. The woman kept feeling her up and then some guy barked “spread your legs.” Yeah, that’s how you want to start your morning.

Bill was enthralled with the urinal fly and golf hole that you can aim at in the urinals in Schiphol Airport bathrooms.

We walked towards our gate. Bill found a pair of sheepskin slippers at a shop along the way and bought them. They look really snug, but they were too wide at the back for April.

The flight from Amsterdam (AMS) to Frankfurt (FRA) was about 30 minutes late boarding and leaving but made up 15 minutes of time and wasn’t too late getting in. It was a 45 minute flight but they still managed to find time to give us a delicious strudel and a drink (hot drinks were even on offer- hear that Air Canada?).

Strudel doodle doo.

April noticed a drop in the standards of the bathrooms right away from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. No more alcohol disinfecting spray to put on toilet paper to clean the seats and the lighting was worse. It just didn’t look as clean. Still great compared to the bathrooms in a lot of places though.

In Frankfurt we didn’t have to wait long until we boarded, about one hour. There was a stand with many different newspapers for free for Lufthansa passengers to read for free and a machine that made tea, coffee, etc free for passengers. What service!

There is no boarding by zones in these Lufthansa flights so everyone just piles together in a lineup and then merges from various places into one or sometimes two gates. By the time you get on, if you aren’t lining up from far ahead of time, the overhead bin space is taken and you’ll have to put your carry-on luggage under the seat in front of you. It’s not the best system for boarding.

The flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona left around the right time. The flight was about 1.5 hours.

We took a cab from the airport to the W Barcelona, which is right on the water, near where the Olympics Village was.

Cab selfie.

When we arrived at the hotel our room wasn’t ready yet, so we went to the W lounge and had a late, but extremely delicious lunch of local fare. Our server, Marco, spoke English with a textbook middle-England accent. Upon further investigation we discovered that the part of England he was from was Sicily (he had studied in England for four years, however). Our second server was a trainee named Julie who was from the Netherlands (Rotterdam) and was doing a 3 month stint here in Barcelona at the hotel after studying hotel management… we just can’t escape these Dutch people. When April came back to the table and she met her for the first time, Julie did a very visible double take. No April’s not Dutch!

We shared a salad of tuna, chicken, olives, Parmesan cheese, etc. and roasted chicken breast with roasted potatoes and a tomato sauce with perfectly cooked whole prawns. The ingredients were obviously fresh and absolutely flawlessly prepared. And there was good bread to eat with the meal with a variety of different things to dip it in like garlic aioli, tomato sauce, red wine salt, etc… 

We left satisfied and went to the front desk to see if they had our room ready yet. They did not. We sat and waited in the lobby since we couldn’t go far as we don’t have our phones working in Europe for calls when the room was ready. After a longer wait, Bill went up to ask again, the room was finally ready. We were relieved because we were both tired and wanted to get out onto the beach in front of the hotel and have some sun and maybe a little sun and just relax and unwind from the journey of the morning.

Our room had been upgraded to the best available one. This one was on the 14^th floor and faced the beach and the city with floor to ceiling windows and a king sized bed. But our bags weren’t there yet. We called down to try to retrieve our bags so we could change into bathing suits. Eventually the bags were brought up, by which time we had discovered two disappointing defects, the note with chocolates was addressed to someone with a name different that Bill’s name (he’s a platinum member, they should know his name- hellllloooooo!!!) and there was a gross long black hair on the soap dish/soap.The bellman sent a cleaning lady to replace the soap.

Welcome chocolates.

We changed and went down to the beach. It was really, really windy and the towels that they gave us at the beach club were blowing around and slapping at us. It was quite warm out, but the wind made it feel a bit chilly, especially when we waded into the Mediterranean. We both dunked ourselves in and then we lied on our beach chairs and dried off a bit. It was kind of cold in that wind though, so eventually we went back to the hotel.

We had a shower and decided that with a view like ours, we should just order in room service and eat in front of the window. The room service came just as April was nodding off. 

Mmm gourmet dog food and a beautiful view. Our night was set to be awesome.

Can't beat this view.

We discovered the fries were stone cold and seemed to have an extra protein bit deep fried with them, a hair. We called down about this. The woman who brought up the replacement fries was so apologetic. She actually came back later with champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries as an apology. But we told her we don’t drink, so she offered to make some other drink for us. We ended up with a Spanish version of a milkshake (more like iced milk, not thick like what you'd get in Canada or the U.S.), one vanilla (real vanilla beans!) and one chocolate that she dropped off on another trip.

Milkshakes and chocolate covered strawberries.

Then there was another knock and a woman showed up with “a tray for Mrs. Hepburn.” We were both puzzled. It was tea. It had a note hoping that April would feel better. We suppose they must have witnessed her in bed earlier in a robe feeling sleepy at dinnertime and thought that she was sick.

Tea makes everything better, even when you didn't know anything was wrong.

Then there was another knock at the door. This time it was the cleaning lady offering turn down service. We refused this and worked on the blog and tried to get ready for an earlier sleep. And we didn’t even mention all of the different calls we received either. Bill became a Platinum Starwood member from all of his business trips and they certainly seem to be acknowledging that they value his membership. They have been very attentive.

And the view out of this room is absolutely stunning.

July 28, 2016- Dutch Resistance Museum, Maritime Museum, Casting About for Souvenirs, Pancake and Omelet Dinner, Red Light District Later at Night, Walking in the Rain, and Packing

We started the day with breakfast in our room as usual. We have been trying to take it somewhat easy, so we didn’t leave the hotel until around lunch time. This is a vacation after all, not an assignment.

We had lunch in the Belgian Bakery near to our hotel, Le Pain Quotidien. Bill ordered the Cobb salad and I ordered the Caesar salad. We thought we’d share, but it turned out that Bill’s salad was all arugula. I don’t like it, but Bill can’t eat it at all (past experiences with him violently vomiting at home and on the street in Seattle eventually confirmed for us to this suspected allergy). I ate his salad and he ate mine.

Dutch orange for our last day in Amsterdam.

We walked to the Dutch Resistance Museum (Museumkaart fully covers this one too), carrying an umbrella the whole way from the hotel that we had borrowed, hoping to avoid the freezing cold wet disaster of the day before. 

On our walk to the Resistance Museum we passed by the Amstel Sluices

And we crossed over the very famous Magere Brug (Bridge a.k.a. the Skinny Bridge)

Bill stands by the PwC sponsored sign for Euro Pride 2016

The museum, we think, is underrated. The exhibits look a little old, but they are filled with great stories of how the Dutch resisted the Nazi occupation of their country in WWII. For example, women with baby carriages had hidden compartments to hide guns and grenades in the carriage because no one would ever suspect them of transporting weapons. There was a woman who was arrested for refusing to bow to the Nazis and spent months in prison which did not damper her resolve. When the officers gave her their socks to darn in prison, she darned the socks shut so they couldn’t even wear them. Awesome. (That’s Dutch stubbornness at its best).

The Dutch created fake identity cards for many people, including Jewish people to try to hide from the Nazis. However, the Nazis caught on to this trick and cross referenced identity numbers with the records office to identify suspicious numbers. In what was clearly a typical direct (blunt) response, the Dutch resistance movement simply burned the records office to the ground. Problem solved.

The bar graphs showing how few Dutch people joined the Dutch Nazi party versus how many joined the an alternative political party (before it was shut down in 1940) was interesting and showed the resolve of the population to stand against fascism.

There were over 1,300 illegal newspapers produced by the Dutch during the war. They had ingenious ways of smuggling out information to get to the Allies including rolls of paper with codes information at the back of a watch, information printed on cigarette paper in code that could be eaten if they were caught, and tiny radios that fit into matchboxes so as to go undetected. When the Nazis shot people at strikes and protests the numbers in the resistance movement only went up even more.

We saw in the museum was a guide to the Netherlands produces for Canadian troops from when they were liberating the Netherlands. The Dutch have not forgotten Canada’s contribution to the war. We think that this museum is a must see. It’s full of history, it’s moving, and it’s really interesting.

The stars of David that Jewish people had to wear during the Nazi occupation.

Old timey Bill watching old timey propaganda films.

Door from the prison used to hold resistance members with some creepy guy staring at me through it.

Babies, guns, and grenades make for an explosive combination.

Canadian guide to the Netherlands.

We sat outside the museum in a rather subdued mood. It was heavy subject matter after all. We shared croissants and a pain au chocolate from our Belgian bakery that we had brought with us. We walked to the nearby Maritime Museum.

The Maritime Museum is easy to spot from a distance. It’s right on the river IJ and has a giant masted ship anchored beside it. We were forced to check our umbrella (which we of course hadn’t needed because we had brought an umbrella this time). The bracelet that you wear as your pass (Museumkaart covers whole cost) acts as your free locker pass. You scan it, it assigns you a locker and then you put your stuff in, close it, and come back later and scan the bracelet and it opens your locker (and tells you which one it is). We didn’t have much time to explore the museum, but we explored the large masted reproduction of the V.O.C. (Dutch East India Company) ship, The Amsterdam, the paintings, the decorations on ships, constellations, and atlases. We went to retrieve our dry umbrella from the lockers and left.

Ahoy, I spot my pirate ship in the distance.

Arrrr yo ho and a bottle of sparkling water me matey.

Which decoration would you choose for the front of your ship?

We walked over to the Prinsengracht in a wild goose chase for a vintage store that April saw was highly rated on Google in an extremely fast and late night search. We finally found the store I Love Vintage pretty close to its closing time. It turned out to be clothes made in the style of vintage clothes. Except that they didn’t look that vintage and the fabrics were not at all what they would have used back then. They only good part of the store to us was the obliging cat who let April pet him.

We left the store in disgust and went to a pancake house just down the road. It boasted that it was the oldest and most famous one in Amsterdam. We’re unconvinced. We both had an omelette and then we shared a cherry pancake. We thought since it’s cherry season that the cherries on the pancake would be fresh. They were not. The pancake was good, but it was made kind of soggy by the canned cherries.

The best part of the fake vintage shop was the obliging cat.

Omelettes.

Cherry pancake.

We walked over to Dam Square because April wanted to look in a department store there …. Interestingly, the layout is very much like any department store back home, cosmetics, perfume, and some luxury boutiques on the bottom, and then clothes and stuff on the upper floors. There was a large athletics department (we didn’t notice this in Paris last year). The Dutch do seem to be really into fitness, health, and comfort. We barely saw anyone wearing heels the whole time we were here, except for some tourists. The Dutch wear comfortable shoes and often runners with anything. We felt right at home. A treasure found, we left.

April found a souvenir

We walked over to the Red Light District, De Wallen, to view it later at night when more women would be in their windows, beckoning for clients to come into their room. Pictures are not allowed in the Red Light area. It’s very clean and we didn’t see anyone behaving disrespectfully really. The women have a panic button in their room so they can summon the police if someone is doing something wrong to them. They are licensed and tested and unionized. This seems like a much more civilized and safer method than what we have at home. The Dutch use harm reduction as a model for everything really including prostitution and soft drugs (hard drugs are still illegal, but available by prescription).

We walked back towards the hotel as the rain started to fall and we struggled to share an umbrella and navigate the tourists. We stopped at a grocery store because Bill wanted to buy a Euro Lottery ticket (82M Euro jackpot this Friday). We also bought a couple of drinks and some licorice (drop). We continued our raining walk home. Some vindictive looking woman body checked April on the way home and almost knocked her off the sidewalk, but other than that, we experienced no incidents of safety concerns or rudeness (except tourist being selfish idiots with sidewalks and the bike riders that think that they are the centre of the earth).

An emu type crazy bird in a window.

De Dam Square - Royal Palace in the foreground with Nieuwe Kerk (New Church)
in the background 

The fancy shopping area near to our hotel.

Love. We loved Amsterdam and it is bitter sweet to say goodbye to it, but there's a whole lot more to this vacation and it should prove to be very exciting.

At the hotel we packed. It was late and we had to be up early. It was evident we were not going to get a full night's sleep, but we had beach time in Barcelona to look forward to.