One card for them all

My last Eurotrip post! (A relief for some of you who are tired of it already, but sad for others who still dream of traveling.)

Part of what makes visiting cities exciting is finding your way around.

Barcelona T-10 (10 trips, zona 1), €6,90
(note: the comma takes the place of the decimal point)
As the city is large and our hostel was not in the center, we really needed this. The Metro can be a headache because the tunnels are sometimes unbelievably long, practically like walking to the next station. Buses are ok.

Paris carnet (10 tickets, Billet Ile-de-France), €11,10
I think printing out 10 tiny tickets is still a waste of paper and adds to the litter, but the nice part about it is that you can split up the tickets. The metro system is compact, the RER (train) goes farther, the buses are routes served us well.

Berlin tageskarte (day ticket, zone AB), €6,10
Expensive for one day, but unlimited rides on buses, trains (S-bahn and Underground), trams and ferries eliminate the need for those tourist hop-on, hop-off buses.

Amsterdam strippen kaart (15 strips), €6,80
Weird system similar to the klippekort in Denmark, only a bit more complex. If you're a tourist, you don't need this, as it's much better to walk and there are not many transport links simply because there's not space! The metro will be of no use to you. Then again you might want to take the occasional tram or bus.

Sandeman's free walking tours

I discovered Sandemans New Europe Tours online (stole our photo from their site) and in the past month, I've been on five of their free tours. Yes, five free tours. (Hey, I give good tips.) Their paid tours are pub crawls and other special interest walks.

Guide: Karen (American)
Gives tours of: Paris
Quotable quote: "Americans have potty mouths"
Irreverent Jewish musician who we had on two tours, the regular city tour and the Montmartre tour, which they were testing at the time.

Guide: Maria (Swedish-Japanese)
Gives tours of: Berlin
I love her! An ex-model turned music mag correspondent whose love affair with a rock star brought her to Germany, she has training in acting, and it shows.

Guide: Elysia (American)
Gives tours of: Amsterdam
UPenn grad with a sweet voice.

Guide: Gregg (Australian)
Gives tours of: London
Nationalistic and cocky (in a funny way) boy from Oz.

They also have free tours of Edinburgh and Munich. Tip generously!

Canal cruising

One of the things Amsterdam is famous for: its man-made canals. I wonder if they still skate on it when it's frozen, as I read in the story of Hans Brinker when I was .
younger

Beaches

Went to two beaches last month: Barceloneta in Barcelona (hot) and Scheveningen (cold) in Holland. As usual, I made no effort to get into the water. Paranoid about damaging my camera at the beach again, I kept it hidden away, only managing to take a few snaps while covering the lens against the wind.

Food trip: AMS

Couldn't find any food shots, so cheese will do.

Dutch food? I'm not sure I encountered that, but there's a lot of Indonesian and Surinamese restaurants in Amsterdam. In search of something cheap, we ended up at Bunga Mawar (Red Rose in Bahasa), where the servings were unbelievably huge for the price.

There were two places where we ate twice. La Place has fresh food at great prices. I stocked up on the salad, artfully piling up the bowl with everything. Craving for Asian again and found Eat Mode.

Markt, museum, park 2

From the title, you can see how close Dutch and German (and English) are.

We didn't feel like paying for full price for Rijkmuseum's "greatest hits" (much of the museum is closed but the most famous pieces are on display), so we missed Rembrandt's The Nightwatch. But we did see the Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, Volgenpark and Albert Cuyp Markt.

South Holland

As Mariel suggested, we went to see The Hague. However, Indi and I went there on a coach tour and nothing was in our control. When the tour company says on the brochure that we will pass by Den Haag, they mean literally pass by without stopping to go down for photos. If you've taken photos from a moving bus, you know it isn't easy. No Peace Palace or Parliament photos because I got frustrated and deleted the shots on the spot.

The nice thing though is that we did go to one of the two remaining Delft blue-and-white pottery makers to see how it's done. We would not have found the place if we weren't with a group. The process is not so complicated and the guide shows you everything. Very much a cottage industry.

Delft is still a town, as it already was in Vermeer's time; The Hague is a built-up city. Amsterdam, though bigger, I would argue, is somewhere in between.