My favorite, Champ Elysees at night

Eli, myself, Avi and Mini (Eli's mom) at little village by a dock

Seno (Eli's stepdad), Myself, Avi and Eli

Having some lunch

Ride em cowboy!

Thumbs up at Marodaum, mini Holland!

At the Heineken factory

Seeing how beer is made

At the Eiffel tower!

Eli and I at the Arc de Triomphe

Test tasting at the Heineken factory

So it's six in the morning right now, and we're leaving the apartment to go to the airport in an hour. I stayed up all night writing notes to go with my holiday gifts I got. I had grand aspirations of writing a killer blog, but here and I am with an hour before I leave, Im not fully packed because I have no idea how Im going to transport the gifts, and I promised Kev Id write him an email. I'm going to be brief for now, and then I'll go back and touch up on this one.

Monday we visited the Official Heineken factory. It was so cool! I got a few free beers here and there, learned all about how to make beer, and specifically the history of a beer that's a pretty prominant part of Amsterdam's history.......................................................
Annnd the internet crapped out at Eli's apartment, and we had to catch our plane. Now im back at the Hostel. I slept through the entire plane ride just like the first time. I'm really glad to be back. Seeing everyone, talking to them about their break, even hearing Hebrew is nice ( Dutch is so ugly).
It was nice staying up all night though. I skyped some friends, called others by phone, and writing notes to all my friends was really enjoyable. I miss them a lot, and it felt good to let them know.

Back to the trip. After the Heineken factory, we visited the Rijks museum. I've been to dozens of museums ( thanks mom) before, but this one was the most extraordinary. The paintings were amazing, most of all Night Watch by Rembrandt, one of the worlds more famous paintings. That night we stayed in because the next day we would be heading to Paris! We took a bus around noon and arrived to Paris at 8:30. We checked into our hotel then went to get dinner in an area called Saint Michelle. After that we walked around, visited the Eiffel Tower, grabbed some beers, and took photos. " The City of Lights" certainly lived up to it's name. I would have loved to walk around all night, but unfortunately it was hovering around freezing temperatures. We woke up the next morning and had to be out of our hotel by noon. The weather was kind of crummy with overcast and on and off showers. We had some minor disappointmets a long the way. We went to the Louvre museum, one of the most famous museum in the world with the most famous painting, The Mona Lisa. The Louvre is open 6 days a week. The one day it's not open happens to be a Tuesday. I was really upset, I'm not going to lie. I mean really upset. But we kept on trekking. Avi, Eli and I walked around what felt like of all of Paris. We visited The Notre Dame Chapel, which was definately a favorite site of mine. I don't know why, it was just stunning. Then we went to the Conciergerie right around the corner, a former royal palace and prison. We had a choice whether to go up the Eiffel Tower, or the Arc de Triomphe. We decided to do the Arc, because it would be a shorter wait and it was close to our tram as well as Champ Elysees. We went around 6 and found out it was closed due to bad weather. Bummed again. We walked up and down Champ Elysees. It was so gorgeous there; all the trees had blue lights attached, matching the lights on Ferris Wheel at the end of the road. We caught a bus at 11, and arrived at 6:30 in the morning to Amsterdam.

The next morning I woke up around noon to go gift shopping for friends. That took up most of my day, I was lucky enough to get a little snow as I walked around Amsterdam. That night was New Years. Nothing too big for us. Eli, Avi and I got some drinks, watched some fireworks and went home. I still had a lot of fun though. I woke up at 9:30 to call friends back home and see how their new years was. It became apparant that I couldn't talk over the people in the background without waking up Eli and Avi, so I gave up after talking to a couple people. Thursday we spent the day at our friend Nofar's house. Nofar lives in Amsterdam, coincidentally about a 5 minute walk from Eli's place, and is also on our section in year course. We hung out with her, watched soccer, ate dinner with her family which was great, and then went out at night to do some final shopping for friends back home. Like I said, I decided to stay up all night that night so I could accomplish some things while exhausting myself for the plane ride. And here I am! Glad to be at the Hostel. Most of Shalem didn't go anywhere for the vacation, and some of the brits came back already, the others should arrive tomorrow night. Because of the Dolphins winning their division and getting a first round game at home for the playoffs, Mike extended his stay so he could go! Pretty cool, I really hope they pull it off, it's going to be a tough game. It's funny how much we missed people. It was hard to keep in touch with people from year course in Amsterdam, but easy to get a hold of people back home. We were regularly so busy during the day we wouldn't get home until late, which is the ideal time to call people back home. Also, Mini and Seno had a Miami home line, so all calls to the states were free!( I made sure to take advantage of that)

Ok, I got some stuff I need to take care of. I need to check with the U of O, and Im really close to finishing this book I started when we left for Amsterdam that Avi recommended called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Very very good book. I've only sat down and read it in the airport and on the bus to Paris, but It's a very easy read (at times) and a lot of fun.
I hope everyone had a good New years/holidays. I miss everyone and send my love from Israel.

Jakey G