Le Tour Cliché - Part 2

03 juin 06 - Trip Day 8
(In the TGV to Antwerp)

Mga Kaibigan

All sorts of reunions took place in the Netherlands. In The Hague, I saw friends that I hadn’t seen since my last visit in the fall of 1996. Some of the Miss Saigon cast in the Netherlands have stayed and made the Netherlands their permanent home. One of them graciously hosted us during our visit, Shweng Lancion. We started off our first day in The Hague walking around the Royal Palace, the Binnenhof of the Parliament and the town square taking our usual photo ops. By midday, we had to make our way to Nordwijk to meet Shweng for lunch and have a tour of the European Space Agency where she works. We saw rooms where they manufactured parts for the Hubble Space Telescope, and what looked to me like a huge camera, apparently for deep space viewing. One of the rooms was for the Design Verification of Spacecraft Acceptance Testing of Flight Hardware. We saw men in shower caps and gowns, obviously engineers working on some space hardware few have ever personally set eyes on. Pretty kewl stuff!

We made our way back to The Hague by early evening to meet friends for dinner at the Dim Sum Palace. Three friends, Patty Manahan-Santiago, Raymond Pacis and Risa Gregorio have sprouted extremely cute Mini-Mes Lucien, Kianna and Zoe respectively, and brought them along. Raymond was accompanied by his lovely wife, Cystine who apparently is a contravida in one of the local Dutch soaps. No one really changed much after ten years. I don’t know if it’s the Dutch climate or just great youthful Asian genes. Ours was the noisiest table as we reminisced about the past and also filled each other in on how life has been to us in the last decade and as with any Filipino gathering, there were lots of raucous laughter and great food. It ended all too soon as it was getting late and the kids were getting tired. Lucien was saying, “Let’s go home na…” with the typical Pinoy kolehiyala accent inherited from his Mom. Too cute!

05 juin 06 - Trip Day 10
(In the TGV to Cologne)

Svenska Tjena

After the Hague, Hubby and I made our way to Amsterdam by late morning one day. We intended to leave earlier to make the most of our day but our days of walking around were catching up with us. We found ourselves getting up later and later. And since this is supposedly a vacation, we decided we would cut ourselves a break and let our bodies rest for as long it wanted.

After a tour through the canals of Amsterdam, we disembarked at Anne Frank’s House. It was the one thing we really didn’t want to miss in this city. Unlike all the other great museums that we have seen, there are no beautiful works of art in this one. Yet, there is none more moving and thought-provoking than this little three-storey house beside a canal. It was a sad and poignant hour as we walked through the secret annex that hid Anne Frank’s family and some friends during most of the Nazi persecution. It was quite a testament as to how cruel intolerance can be at its worst form.

The next order of the day was to meet our two Svenska Tjenas, Helen and Helena who at that time were just flying in from Sweden to get together after six years. We met them for lunch at Dam Square and stuffed our faces with pancake pizzas while getting updated on each others’ lives. We continued on as we walked around checking out Amsterdam’s famous red light district where you find prostitutes on window displays similar to retail storefronts. Like retail, there was variety as you can find women of all races. Save for one, all of them were super-sized. That one exception was the one who actually had a client come-a-knocking as we walked past her “office.” I remembered it being a little bit busier than it was but I was told that the “fun” really started toward early evening. Our next stop was the Rijksmuseum where they housed works by Rembrandt and other well-respected Dutch painters. That day was when they premiered a short light and sound show called Night Watch which highlighted one of his paintings and the whole story behind it.

We ended our time together with our Swedish sisters by having drinks at the Guinness Restaurant near the American Hotel. It was a short reunion, but sweet and fun nevertheless.

to be continued...