[Image]On the train from Paris to Amsterdam yesterday, I had plenty of time to take in the sights and really reflect on our week of sightseeing and wine-drinking that we did in Paris. What a fun, yet completely unpredictable (yet totally forseeable and predictable) adventure we had...

Really though, the trip was something I knew I need to gain some much-needed perspective on the world I live in. The country I live in. The President that makes us look bad to the rest of the world and is completely unapologetic about it. I've grown up completely sheltered to a lot of the world's ongoing existence, and yet I think I know so much about how the world works, how money travels from the US to India and to China and to Europe and then back to us, how the Dutch wear wooden shoes, how the French like cheese--I thought I had it down.

[Image]
We finished up in Paris by taking a trek through the underground catacombs, and it easily became one of my trip highlights so far. From there, we went to the Musée d'Orsay, definitely an architectural delight. An old-train-station-turned-museum, we got in on our museum pass which we thought was expired and quickly got through some of the best of Monet, Manet and plenty of other names that I would have learned had I taken art history in college. None of it mattered, because the Van Gogh's completely blew me away. Our trip to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is sure to be one of my highlights...

So much to say, and yet it's so hard to wrap my brain around this experience. I've got days in Amsterdam to relax, reflect, and eat pancakes. Mmmmmm, pancakes.