My cousin Raymi

So, I finally went to Amsterdam. Second time meow.

There is no way to get a photo with this iconic thing alone. We made it werk though.

Nice red hair, I’ll do that next thanks.

I can see sis walking away between the m and s. We went with dutch mum and her sister met up with us too, then later mom dutch ditched us. Lol.

I took many pictures, naturally. I only uploaded a smaller-ish amount because I still have loads of other things previously uploaded and I don’t intend to move forward until I go back, as annoying and as over it as I am. The blog must go on. Fourteen years strong. Yeezus.

Had a groovy time at Rijksmuseum. Posing in front of many historical, ancient, big deal paintings before many tourists with varying degrees of reaction to their encounter with World Class Canadian ambassador to The Netherlands Super star RTM esquire.

Yes I read up on the things I exploited. Happy there was English to be read at all.

Hugh Lumberjackman ponders chopping down that tree…

Yo relax.

I get you.

Concentration camp jacket. I’ll show you the photo of the girl it belonged to next Raymsterdam post.

Sister “the artist” (of all things) blew me away with how bored she became quickly. I was digging it but I did enjoy how ADD like me she was and we breezed right on through that place. It was like the ROM but, Euro.

Hallo.

We met up with a friend of hers who gave us a cool insider tour of the “real” artisty shit. The insider peek. And I’ll be sure to show you when I have some GODDAMN TIME!

Like this adorabs place.

Orange is their colour.

Should have bought. Am 30 years old. Should have bought.

Not suppose to take pics in here. Try and stop me. I was like you should not have brought me in here. I was coasting on shopohol from the previous day. I bought pearl earrings, a sweater, gloves, some souvenirs for peeps, and fudge for bf. I still have more damage to do before leaving in a week. The countdown is on. I should have bought a troll.

Hashtag brutal.

Classic. I bought wine/booze box replicas of these houses. They lay flat so I can travel with them. Lighter than all the porcelain I plan to purchase. I’m just going to put a TAKE ONE box in the lunch space at work.

See those red lights… Sister’s friend made us go haha. I was so paranoid and shy I guess but you MUST GO if you go to Amsterdam. If you take pictures which I recommend not doing, their pimps will beat you. All the girls are plastic so it’s just like basically walking through a strip club, replete with dudes in jogging pants.

And behind me is a café. Yes, that kind of café. Also a must. Those are my house boxes on the table.

And my new best friend called mustard hat. I got tired of seeing pictures of myself in my roots knit beret beanie.

I know I will lose weight when I get home, don’t care. Yolo. Enjoy your life.

I don’t know why this got all distorted, thanks instagram. I realized there was free wifi halfway through combing the museum and the ONE thing I uploaded (to facebook) roaming on my own data skyrocketed my data usage to 1.52MB ughhh. BTW that’s a selfie of Van Gogh.

Bicycle heaven. If I lived here I would have a crazy decked out bike. Well, I do kind of live here and I do have a bike but it’s just practical. And awesome. I wish I could fly home with it but you have to have a bike here and shipping one would be economically insane.

I spent 72 Euros on shirts and got 12 of them. Thanks H&M discounts. My boots were 89 euros, ha, “boots”. I wanted black ankle motorcycleish ones but everything I liked they didn’t have in my size. These are winterized in the soles and I can actually walk nicely in them, so lets do this!

Ready for the lamest fashion show evs?

This will be a work shirt.

My damage. Cheapskate forevs. The Euro symbol is pretty crazy, I always confuse it for the pound which is very similar.

Ha ha Canadian tuxedo time. This shirt will so be going to Hailey.

Sis bought this dress too.

I wasn’t sure if I could make this work but why not?

Of course the one pair of shoes I like are this number in price, which is MORE considering the exchange. Every time I take out money and check my account I see how much it is getting raped. But I haven’t done any shopping yet so, I deal.

Les original.

Nice sky.

Not many change rooms to go around.

This feels like last week it was just two days ago.

Yay! And that’s all I have to say about that. Bye!

HoliDutch

Euro continuation continueth. I uploaded these, last week? Anyway who cares, don’t have much time now even to do this cos I am finally going shopping today and I am pumped.

We went for lunch in this town I have been to several times before, it’s nice to town hop and be elusive to people you may or may not bump into plus it adds travel factor for my bf, maybe? ps. at night these xmasy things look like this. we drove through before looking to eat but the place was swarming with party peeps. Weren’t into it.

To the left is the resto we chose, we ate there in the spring/summer just before we left for Canada. I wore the same striped shirt both times, what are the odds. Actually the odds are rather good because my euro wardrobe always seems to be limited.

Giving you a feel for it.

Bike nation.

One Canadian dork coming right up.

The Hello Kitty bar. People sit on the inside with the heaters and they can smoke in there but it’s not smokey like you’d expect. It’s super fun and the vibe was v holiday, I much enjoyed watching tables of geezers drink and blather on to one another. I thought of my grandpa.

First we sat inside.

Then a table popped up. Behind me was a line of people (grey haireds) and I’m sure were quite inquisitive of my picture snap/posing. It’s called being a tourist. Deal with it.

Sister got me this scarf, she has one too and also one for her bestie. The year of scarves. Kind of like when big necklaces were my thing, you can just wear a lame H&M tee but a big accessory makes it look like you made effort.

Dutch mom gave me a suitcase of beauty products. Love it.

This is the shirt I wore here last time. Heh. You ever get caught doing that or go into a store wearing merchandise from it and feel like a total dweeb like omg everyone is going to notice. No one notices/cares, everyone is self-involved.

Resistance is futile. I resisted. My wrap didn’t require mayo and I dipped my fries in its sauce instead. Score one me.

Dutch goths keeping the dream alive. You do you.

Our table lamp. Adorablah.

His.

hers. I ate this last time too and it was a miracle to recall what it was that I ate previously, cos I knew it was awesome but what the hell was it? Tandoori wrap, but you think it was written in English on the menu? NEWP.

Grolsch is the Molson Canadian of Holland. Drinking it back home is like, yeah cool but to be where it hails from is neat.

Teeniest ice rink ever but cool and they built a bar for the parents. Of course they did.

Whee Christmas light tree.

Some days later we went out early to do some errands.

One of these days I’ll manicure up.

Morning hair/face. Slathered on lip gloss to be less disgusting in the face.

It’s just so sticky.

I like this road, err highway. Two lanes in a valley.

Be careful of 600 deer.

Errand one found me pretending to read Dutch magazines while my bf had a quick meeting. I was scared someone would start talking to me and realize for the last ten minutes I was pretending to read and they’d know that because I’d be all, in English please. Lol. No one spoke to me, just smiled curiously.

It was lunch hour too so all the jokers came out to mingle and eat and I thought about my office. Time is flying by I’ll be back in 9 days.

Then we went for lunch.

But I gotta get in the shower now sorry to leave you hanging. Stay warm Canada I hear it’s brutal over there. Here it is mild and we broke records yesterday and today for that. Makes up for the cold ass spring I endured before here.

Check ya laterrrrrrrrrrr.

Raymi you’re a firewerk

I have many of these clips, each ranging/varying from extreme scary to mildly. I was hit by something that exploded while I was running to duck for cover in someone’s front porch. It is legal to set fireworks off from 10am to 2am on NYE plus all week long, it sounded like war for over a week. Cool but insane.

Good morning.

It’s not like this back home cos we are “over” fireworks but in Europe they just really enjoy blowing shit up.

Intermingled between the legal fireworks every so often would be an atomic blast, an “illegal” one and it was not for the faint of heart. Feel bad for the all the house pets out there.

One of these frigging things flew at me. Before NYE, 40 eye injuries and 23 fingers blasted off in all of Holland. Those numbers were certainly increased exponentially after new year’s eve night. Crazy euros.

More more more later, got tings to do. xo raymbo