shopping Archives -

Walmart

December 2, 2014 Drew

We can officially cross “sleeping in a Walmart parking lot” off that big bucket full of lists we are carrying around with us – Success! We also ate a decent BBQ lunch at the Daytona Pig Stand – Yumm!

We’re headed further south into Florida, and in an attempt to keep the costs down a little, I’m trying out a strategy of dry camping (read: sleeping like a hobo) between campsite stays. Today, we headed for a Love’s truckstop down the road a bit, but found that it truly was a truckstop with overnight parking meant only for truckers or people who can’t hear very well. The noise of an entire parking lot of idling trucks was deafening, so we made the decision to head a little further down the road to Walmart.

It is fairly well known that Walmart has an unwritten rule that allows RV’rs to park overnight. Actually they had a written rule on the sign right outside the spot we picked that said in big letters “No Overnight Parking”. But screw that noise, we’re staying! A few more rigs joined us by the end of the evening – they parked right next to us too which was weird given the massive expanse of empty parking lot they had to work with.

When we first arrived, we naturally went in to do some shopping. There’s just… so many deals! We might have bought another boogie board, and some chips, and maybe even a deadbolt kit that I want to eventually install on the door… We went back an hour or so later. Noelle may have tried on some clothes including a t-shirt with wolves howling at a moon with Santa and his reindeer silhouetted like ET… We may have bought some Subway, and then returned a few hours later to buy some bread and some paper towels…

All in all, this “free” night at Wally World has cost us more than a night at a hotel! “It’s simple economics son; I don’t understand it at all, but… God I love it!”

Amsterdam

I Amsterdam Day Three

October 4, 2014 Drew

Day three started a bit late for us. Ok it was 1:30 in the afternoon, but after two days of walking around all day, we were freakin tired!

Today, we took the tram to Centraal station and hopped on a train to the outlying “tourist trap” of Zaanse Schans. This place has a bunch of cool, old-world dutch stuff like windmills and bakeries, and the first ever Albert Heijn (it’s a grocery store). The windmills were relocated here sometime in the 1970’s though, and now the whole site has a reputation for just being one of “those tourist places.”

Honestly though, I’m all for a place that lines everything up nice and neat for you to take pictures and have fun. Zaanse Schans has a ton of good information, and was a lot of fun to visit. The weather was beautiful and sunny, and the fact that it was all covered with the I Amsterdam card made it even better!

After walking through the site we headed back to the train station – already pretty tired and hungry. We made our way back those beautiful Golden Arches in Dam square for another quick pick-me-up of good American food (and probably chemical) engineering.

We tried to go in to the New Church, but it was closed. We tried to go visit the Royal Palance, but it was closed. We returned to the Red Light District and tried to visit the Old Church. I saw a sign that said ‘Open’ with an arrow pointing through the church doors, but they were locked. I was starting to get mad that all these places were closed, but then we found the correct side entrance – whew, rant averted! The church was very cool, and had a distinctly naval style and feeling on the inside.

We then headed back to Centraal station to catch the canal boat tour that is included with the I Amsterdam card. This experience was actually very disappointing. We stood in line for about an hour and a half waiting to get on this boat. Turn’s out you can’t really see out the windows that well, and the seating is a free for all so if you happen to be towards the back of the group you are screwed.

Here is the lovely old Italian couple that decided to take up both window seats so they could see better. They didn’t move from there the whole time – lovely.

Finally off the boat, we headed back to experience some more of late night Red Light District before the skies opened up with a cold torrential rain. After three days of intense touristing, and almost two months of great weather and great times, Amsterdam was telling us “it’s time to move on!”

Overall the I Amsterdam card was worth it. It lets you in to a ton of great museums and sites, gives you free GVB tram transportation all over the city, and includes a bunch of additional non-Amsterdam sites and discounts. We are exhausted from three days of bustling around, but I also feel like we are capping this whole trip off with a set of great travel experiences. We head back to the States next week, and I’m looking forward to what comes next!

Amsterdam

Spui Square

September 12, 2014 Drew

An outdoor book fair, a hidden courtyard, and a floating flower market – it’s Spui Square! Noelle and I both got hit with a pretty bad flu bug over the last couple days, but we managed to stay coherent enough to wander around this cool part of the city.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful for the last week or so, and today was no different. Spui square is a fairly short walk away from our apartment in the Jordaan neighborhood, and the route takes you over some of the best canal views in the city!

I’ve also spotted some sweet VW’s in the area. Seeing these makes me miss my rotting piece of metal back home just a little bit. On Fridays, the square hosts an outdoor book market (I guess going to outdoor markets is a thing we do now?) We didn’t actually buy anything, but it was fun to sit back and watch the bustling activity. Amsterdam is definitely a city in motion; people riding bikes right and left, cars honking, trams streaking by. We love it, and it’s quite a big change from the automobile gridlock of suburbia Chicago! We soon found our way into the Begijnhof courtyard. This hidden quiet space is completely opposite and insulated from the busy Spui square right next door. This place is actually super old, dates from the 1300’s, and used to house a group of religious women known as beguines. Today it is a nice, bright courtyard with a couple cool churches and private houses. We then wandered back out to Spui, walked down the street a bit, and found ourselves at the Bloemenmarkt. This floating flower market area was pretty cool. We wanted to visit this place in anticipation for our soon to be trip to the famed flower auction at Aalsmeer. Honestly, I was expecting there to be more actual flowers for sale, but most of it was the bulbs or seeds, along with the obligatory wooden shoe or kitchy windmill trinket. A little too much on the tourist trap side for me!

At this point, the flu symptoms were starting to kick back in, so we headed back to the apartment – hopefully we will be back at it soon with a couple decent trips planned for next week!

Amsterdam

Noodermarkt

August 30, 2014 Drew

Building on our fun times wandering around the antique shop earlier this week, we went to explore Amsterdam’s Noodermarkt. This is a fun and busy street market on the corner of Prisengracht and Westerstraat in the Jordaan area. On Saturday, it’s a farmers market with a little bit of flea market mixed in. On Monday, it’s a big flea market with lots of textiles, and a little bit of farmer’s market mixed in – either way its an opportunity to fork over some more euros for some more stuff.

We picked up some bread and goat cheese, and poked around the rest of the stalls. They had a ton of mushrooms, a fish booth, a bunch of veggies and grains. The produce here is all “ecological” (organic), and was priced similar to the local chain markets.

After milling through the crowded booths for a while, we walked down Westerstraat. We had lunch at Cafe de Blaffende Vis, and it was awesome! Relatively cheap sandwiches, great desserts (I had apple pie – heck yeah!), good atmosphere – we will definitely be back for more.

Overall, just another great day experiencing a little bit of the goodness that is Amsterdam!

Amsterdam

I love antiek!

August 27, 2014 Drew

Noelle and I found a place selling antiques… it was awesome! Since we are so “young, cool, hip, etc”, of course we love to rummage through any type of antique store. We have frequented many such places in the States ranging from back-alley basement shops to those huge floor-to-ceiling antique malls off many an interstate in the Midwest. We ducked into what looked like a small little shop off one of the side streets in the Jordaan, only to find that it was actually a large network of interconnected rooms with aisles and aisles of old stuff just waiting to be found – so there went our day!

We stepped into this place to see what old stuff looks like in Amsterdam – we weren’t disappointed. This place had all kinds of crazy stuff, and we spent plenty of time wandering around soaking it all in – we didn’t actually buy anything, but hey we looked at a lot of it!

Some of this stuff is super old, and from all over the place – a little different than your average junk shop back home. Noelle managed to find herself back in a corner of the shop that was too tight for me and the backpack to fit – this place is crazy!

Yikes!

On a side note, we tried a new place for lunch, Burgermeester. This place had good reviews online, and so following with my new general rule about eating out, we decided to give this burger joint a try. Honestly, I think I am just way to fond of Five Guys, and so will probably never be able to find a decent burger anywhere else… but let’s just say Burgermeester hasn’t really ‘meestered’ the art of making burgers! I’ll stick with more traditional Amsterdam fare like fries smothered in ketchup and mayo.