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Amsterdam Today, Plus a Soupçon of Paris · The Frommer's Travel Show

• 0:13
  And welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.
• 0:15
  I'm your host, Pauline Fromer, and I have been traveling.
• 0:20
  It's been way too long.
• 0:22
  I went to Europe and to help me discuss this, I have my partner in crime, fromers.com's editor in chief par excellence, Jason Cochran.
• 0:35
  Hey, Jason.
• 0:36
  Welcome back to the Fromer Travel Show.
• 0:39
  Thanks.
• 0:39
  You know, I love to hear your travel stories.
• 0:41
  I wouldn't miss it if you asked somebody else to tell your travel stories to.
• 0:44
  I'd be.
• 0:44
  Hey, so, yeah, I'm eager to hear about your trip.
• 0:48
  Oh, well, good.
• 0:49
  Yeah.
• 0:49
  Well, I went to Amsterdam first and I was nervous about it because there's been these horror stories in the news saying that because of the new exit and entry system, or it might be the entry and exit system,
• 1:08
  that people have been waiting four, five hours, especially at Amsterdam.
• 1:13
  Amsterdam was apparently one of the problem airports.
• 1:17
  It frequently is.
• 1:19
  Yeah.
• 1:19
  For all sorts of reasons.
• 1:21
  Schiphol can be crazy.
• 1:22
  Yeah.
• 1:23
  But we got through in about an hour and 10 minutes.
• 1:26
  What they do now is they take your fingerprints and they also take your photo and breaks my heart.
• 1:34
  They no longer give you a passport stamp.
• 1:37
  Oh, see, one day we'll be talking about passport stamps and they'll be like, what were those?
• 1:42
  And we'll be the people who know.
• 1:44
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45
  But an hour and change isn't terrible.
• 1:48
  But it does seem kind of long at the same time.
• 1:52
  Yeah.
• 1:52
  Especially because I hardly spoke to a human being.
• 1:56
  It was mostly just being in lines and then dealing with a computer screen.
• 2:02
  But for some reason, yeah, the lines were long.
• 2:06
  So what's causing the backlog as far as you saw?
• 2:08
  Is it people having a hard time figuring out how to work the screenshot?
• 2:13
  That's a good question.
• 2:14
  It didn't.
• 2:15
  It.
• 2:15
  The.
• 2:15
  The screens went pretty fast.
• 2:17
  I think they don't have enough computers to really keep this moving fast.
• 2:22
  And they're going to have to figure that out because they'll need new spaces for that.
• 2:29
  And I do know that it varies per airport.
• 2:32
  People are just giving wildly different reports on how long it takes.
• 2:35
  Really short for some, really long for others.
• 2:38
  And we're still kind of figuring out the data of which airports will be hard and at what time of day, because this is also new.
• 2:45
  Not surprisingly, the Scandinavian airports are zooming people through, you know, very efficiently.
• 2:52
  But apparently it's a problem in Paris, it's a problem in Amsterdam.
• 2:56
  And I gotta say, we flew home from Paris and that was, oh, my goodness, what chaos.
• 3:03
  They now have you get into this line to go through security and the man halfway through the line says, you go this way, you go that way.
• 3:14
  And I got very paranoid because it was all of these beautiful young things who went to the right and they put me and my husband to the left.
• 3:22
  And I thought, oh, is this an age thing?
• 3:24
  But no, the beautiful young things didn't have carry on luggage.
• 3:30
  And they made you put it into one of those contraptions that make sure it's not too big and.
• 3:37
  And not too heavy, and our luggage was too heavy.
• 3:42
  So we had to go back to the.
• 3:44
  We had to book it, we had to check it in, which was a bummer, but what can you.
• 3:48
  I would have thought the beautiful young things would overpack.
• 3:52
  Right.
• 3:52
  I just want to say one thing.
• 3:54
  If you're going to London, they're not having a hard time with their entry and exit system because they're on a different system.
• 3:59
  They're not in the EU anymore.
• 4:00
  And they put it in about two years ago.
• 4:03
  So they've worked out their kinks.
• 4:04
  It's only if you're going to be going to continental Europe, you're going to have to think about this.
• 4:07
  Yeah, yeah, good point.
• 4:08
  So it took us about an hour and a half to get through security to get on the plane in Paris.
• 4:14
  And interestingly, they took our photo there.
• 4:17
  And then when we got to JFK in the United States, there was this one line.
• 4:25
  A woman at the start of the line just glanced at our passports and said, okay, go in, you're an American citizen.
• 4:31
  And.
• 4:32
  And all we had to do was take a photo, which they then compared to another photo.
• 4:38
  And I think it must have been the photo from Paris, though I'm not sure.
• 4:43
  And you know how at the airport they now have a sign that says, we will not keep your photo for longer than 24 hours.
• 4:50
  No signs.
• 4:52
  No signs.
• 4:54
  So I don't know.
• 4:54
  I remember Global Entry.
• 4:56
  Do you think they were comparing it to your Global Entry picture?
• 4:58
  I'm embarrassed to say I am not a member of Global Entry.
• 5:02
  So this was just the hoi polloi.
• 5:05
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:06
  Okay.
• 5:07
  So we've got you arriving and we've got you leaving, but we don't have what you did in between the two.
• 5:12
  Right, right, right.
• 5:13
  So we went to Amsterdam, where I haven't been for many years.
• 5:16
  And my daughter, who was just in Namibia, she met people on a tour.
• 5:21
  She did, who lived in Amsterdam, so she had buddies to hang out with there.
• 5:25
  So that's how we chose Amsterdam.
• 5:27
  And it's a glorious city.
• 5:29
  Oh, my goodness.
• 5:30
  Yeah.
• 5:31
  Especially on the Canals?
• 5:32
  Oh, yeah, just float.
• 5:34
  We did.
• 5:34
  One of the very first touristic things we did was take one of those canal floats, and you go out on this boat that's festooned with orange flowers.
• 5:43
  Has to do with the House of Orange.
• 5:45
  In the middle of it is a big old bar because they want to upsell you on beer and liquor and all that stuff.
• 5:52
  We didn't do it.
• 5:53
  We got onto the boat early, though, so we got.
• 5:57
  Cause we.
• 5:57
  I don't know, we got there early, so we got the best seats at the front.
• 6:01
  And the back of the boat is this cushioned area where you can lie back like a pasha and just enjoy the canals and the bridges going over you.
• 6:11
  And learned all about the canals.
• 6:15
  Fascinating.
• 6:16
  Actually, one of the first things we did is we went to the Canal Museum.
• 6:20
  So we learned about how they were built.
• 6:22
  And then on this boat trip, how many bikes do you think they dredge up from the canals every year?
• 6:31
  What would you guess?
• 6:31
  You know, I bet it's a huge one because there's a guy on YouTube who uses a magnet in Amsterdam's canals to pull out bikes, and he's coming out with them constantly.
• 6:39
  So I would guess thousands.
• 6:41
  Like tens of thousands.
• 6:43
  15,000 bikes every year, and, in fact, entire cars roll into the canals.
• 6:52
  They didn't used to have railings to stop the cars from rol into the canals when people parked them.
• 6:58
  And finally, the insurance companies put the railings up because they were tired of paying for these cars rolling into the canals.
• 7:07
  I imagine that bike thieves will throw away the bikes that they've stolen when the trail gets hot, you know, so there's all sorts of reasons people throw these things into the canals.
• 7:16
  But these boat.
• 7:17
  These boat tours you take.
• 7:18
  I mean, yeah, they're touristy, right?
• 7:20
  But some things are touristy for a very good reason, because they give you a perspective on the city that's invaluable.
• 7:25
  Oh, yes, absolutely.
• 7:27
  So you get to see the beauty of these canals.
• 7:30
  And the canals are there for a very interesting reason.
• 7:33
  I mean, Amsterdam is basically a swamp.
• 7:37
  You know, they built it on land that's below sea level, and they dredged out the canals so that the water would go into them and they'd have dry land upon which to build buildings.
• 7:51
  So you learn all about how that happened and the incredible engineering feats that were put into place to create this city.
• 8:02
  The Canal museum was terrific, as was the canal tours.
• 8:06
  You learn these things on both of them.
• 8:09
  Those were things I booked at the last minute.
• 8:11
  The things I booked weeks in advance.
• 8:14
  And thank God I did, was I went back to the Anne Frank house, which I had gone to when I was, I think, in my early 20s.
• 8:24
  And you know, it's a very moving experience to go up that narrow staircase into these tiny rooms in which they were basically imprisoned for two years.
• 8:36
  Well, imprisoned by choice because they wanted to say stay safe.
• 8:42
  Yeah, right.
• 8:43
  And I remember in my 20s they had an exhibit on the ground floor about genocides happening elsewhere in the world that never again, which is what is always said about the Holocaust, never let this happen again, was happening
• 9:02
  in other places.
• 9:04
  Interestingly, that exhibit is gone, which saddened me because I remember when I.
• 9:12
  Yeah, when I was in my early 20s, I found that incredibly moving and incredibly important.
• 9:20
  And the house itself is so popular that you go through in this massive crowd now.
• 9:28
  So it's not as moving an experience as it used to be, I thought.
• 9:34
  And it might be that I actually went to the Anne Frank exhibit that's touring around the world and that was in New York City for two years.
• 9:42
  And.
• 9:42
  And in that exhibit, if it's in your town, you should go.
• 9:46
  They actually recreated the furniture so you really get a feeling of being in the apartment.
• 9:54
  Whereas the actual Anne Frank house, it's empty rooms.
• 9:58
  Just because there's such big crowds going through them.
• 10:02
  They never could have recreation furniture there.
• 10:06
  Yeah.
• 10:06
  Cause it's really one of those tiny ancient houses in Amsterdam, you know, and they were living way up tip top.
• 10:12
  People who haven't been able to picture it.
• 10:13
  It wasn't even their house, you know, so they had a couple rooms in it.
• 10:17
  Yeah.
• 10:17
  It was Anne Frank's father's office and it was his, his compatriots who kept him safe.
• 10:25
  I also did a Jewish tour of Amsterdam, which was very interesting.
• 10:30
  You know, Amsterdam had the most Jews killed per capita of any city in Europe.
• 10:39
  And to this day they, you know, it's a heart wrenching question why, why was.
• 10:47
  And it's a sad reason.
• 10:49
  You know, the Nazis did something very devious.
• 10:53
  They created a Jewish council in each city and they worked with a select number of Jews to help make the process go easier.
• 11:03
  And the Jews did this because they thought maybe they could convince them not to do things, maybe they could make things go better.
• 11:10
  But somehow the Jewish council in Amsterdam was far more efficient than other cities.
• 11:18
  Interestingly, Rotterdam, the Jews in that council purposefully slowed things down and put up barriers.
• 11:26
  But that didn't seem to have happened in Amsterdam.
• 11:31
  You cannot placate tyranny, hoping that tyranny won't come for you.
• 11:34
  Ultimately, you can't buy your way out of a tyrant's viewpoint.
• 11:40
  Anyway, they did do some things.
• 11:42
  We went to one place, it's this beautiful theater that was used as a transport place.
• 11:49
  So Jews would go there and be registered to be transported out.
• 11:54
  And they started dividing the children from the parents during this process, putting the children across the street in a kindergarten, a Jewish kindergarten.
• 12:04
  And the head of that kindergarten and the head of the Jewish Council came up with a plan.
• 12:08
  Plan.
• 12:10
  When the streetcar came and caused a diversion on the street.
• 12:15
  Well, first of all, they would ask the parents, do you want your children to be taken to live in the country among families who will shelter them, you know, and not go to the camps with you?
• 12:26
  And those parents who agreed, they would send a note across the street.
• 12:31
  And then when the trams were in the middle of the street, they would run with the children around the corner and get them to safety while somebody at the point where they were being escorted out would take the
• 12:47
  children's names off the list.
• 12:49
  Wow.
• 12:50
  So they did this for an entire year.
• 12:52
  And we stood there as the trams came up and you could see.
• 12:56
  Oh yeah, you can't see across the street, but they're only in place for maybe a minute.
• 13:03
  So it was a very dramatic tour, very interesting.
• 13:07
  And you learn this on a, on a, the separate tour, as you say, where can someone else find this tour if they would like to do it too when they're in Amsterdam?
• 13:13
  This was a walking tour that we recommend in our book, Fromers Day by Day.
• 13:18
  I didn't know you were going to say that, but yes, always the Fromer's guide, of course, yes.
• 13:23
  So that's where you find it.
• 13:24
  Interestingly, a woman had booked this tour on Viator and because Anne Frank was in it, she just assumed we'd be going to the Anne Frank house.
• 13:35
  And when she heard in the middle of the tour, no, that wasn't happening, she was very distressed.
• 13:41
  And it brought to my mind, I think a lot of people so rely on these third party sites now to do their bookings, that they make silly mistakes.
• 13:54
  And this other woman, they make silly assumptions.
• 13:57
  They don't do their full research.
• 13:59
  And this other woman on the tour said, oh, it's okay.
• 14:03
  I was able to get Anne Frank tickets just two days in advance.
• 14:08
  I went to Stubhub and, you know, I paid a hundred dollars per ticket, which is five times what you should be paying.
• 14:18
  But you know, this is something so.
• 14:20
  Twisted about scalping tickets to Anne Frank's house.
• 14:22
  Having scalpers so the more of the less.
• 14:25
  The lesson is you cannot go to the Anne Frank House at the last minute and hope for a ticket.
• 14:30
  You can't go to the Ann Frank Planet Ahead.
• 14:33
  Right.
• 14:33
  You can't go to the Van Gogh Museum at the last minute.
• 14:36
  You probably can't go to the Rijksmuseum.
• 14:37
  There's so many things now that you really have to plan ahead for.
• 14:42
  But those are the big three in Amsterdam, though, right?
• 14:44
  Those are the big three.
• 14:45
  And we saw all three.
• 14:47
  They were wonderful.
• 14:48
  The Rijksmuseum, right.
• 14:50
  Now the Night Watch, which is that massive canvas by Rembrandt, it's being restored.
• 14:57
  And so instead of getting to see it, you watch the restorers painstakingly take off layer upon layer, and there's a woman explaining what they're doing.
• 15:09
  And interestingly, my daughter preferred that to seeing the painting.
• 15:15
  I was kind of bummed that you really couldn't see the painting, but she thought it was fascinating, by the way.
• 15:19
  It's been that way for a few years now.
• 15:21
  I was in Amsterdam a few years ago and it was in that glass box away from the wall.
• 15:24
  So they've been doing this for a very long time.
• 15:26
  They've been doing it for two years and it's going to take another six years.
• 15:30
  Yeah, this is.
• 15:31
  It's a massive painting, but I'm glad.
• 15:33
  They still have it on view because a lot of museums just take things away when they're restoring them or working on them and you won't see them.
• 15:39
  So I don't know.
• 15:40
  Yes, it's not ideal, but I'd much rather see an obstructed view rather than no view at all.
• 15:45
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:46
  And the Rijksmuseum.
• 15:47
  Oh, my goodness.
• 15:48
  So much.
• 15:50
  So much to see there.
• 15:51
  One of my favorite exhibits was different drinking games the Dutch played with these very elaborate cups of silver cups.
• 16:01
  Like, there was one silver cup with a windmill on it, and you had to blow the windmill so it spun, and then you had to drink everything in the cup before the windmill stopped spinning.
• 16:11
  Why did you stop doing that?
• 16:13
  That sounds fantastic.
• 16:14
  Yeah.
• 16:14
  Another one had these different markers and you had to gulp just to one marker.
• 16:20
  And if gulp too much and it went past the marker, you had to drain the entire cup, which my daughter says is actually a current drinking game.
• 16:30
  So.
• 16:31
  But that one you could repeat at home.
• 16:33
  I don't have the equipment to do the windmill thing, but yeah, that one.
• 16:36
  Make a line on a cup and you're good to go.
• 16:38
  Right.
• 16:39
  So my daughter was with us.
• 16:40
  She's 22 for some of the time.
• 16:43
  Some of the time she was off with friends and she did something I didn't even know you could do.
• 16:48
  They live in Amsterdam.
• 16:49
  They took her swimming in a canal.
• 16:52
  Apparently it's clean enough.
• 16:54
  And then one night while we went out to dinner with a friend of mine who's a travel writer who lives in Amsterdam.
• 17:01
  Blaine Batchelor, a really writer.
• 17:04
  She's lovely.
• 17:04
  Yeah, yeah, she's lovely.
• 17:06
  She went to the beach with them 18 miles away and hung out and had just a great time.
• 17:12
  She also insisted that we try space cakes, although it wasn't a space cake.
• 17:17
  We had a red velvet cake which is.
• 17:21
  Are they made of actual space?
• 17:25
  What's in them?
• 17:27
  Do we know what is in these?
• 17:29
  I would assume hashish.
• 17:31
  Hashish.
• 17:32
  It was either hashish or marijuana.
• 17:34
  And it didn't hit us until about an hour and 20 minutes later.
• 17:39
  And then, wow, it really walloped us.
• 17:42
  It was an entirely silent dinner because we were so spaced out.
• 17:47
  I'm sure that the people in Amsterdam are quite used to people having silent dinners.
• 17:52
  Yes.
• 17:53
  But my older daughter, who wasn't with us, was very jealous that our younger daughter had seen us stoned.
• 17:59
  But you know, when in Amsterdam.
• 18:02
  That's right.
• 18:03
  But I'm told that the people in Amsterdam aren't thrilled about this ongoing reputation as a place tourists can go to get stoned.
• 18:10
  Did you feel anything like that when you were there?
• 18:13
  No, no, I mean, it's.
• 18:15
  It seemed like.
• 18:17
  It seemed like the coffee shops were everywhere and, you know, and we also walked through the red light district and, you know, it did all that.
• 18:26
  So.
• 18:27
  So Amsterdam.
• 18:28
  Yeah.
• 18:28
  What a city.
• 18:29
  Absolutely gorgeous.
• 18:31
  Fabulous food, fabulous people.
• 18:33
  The one bad part was we were there during a record breaking heat wave.
• 18:40
  There was a bunch of hot air came over from the Sahara desert, mostly covering Paris, but also affecting Amsterdam.
• 18:50
  And Amsterdam is not a place that gets hot.
• 18:53
  So we were staying in this lovely little hotel with no air conditioning, which was rough, so we had to keep the windows open.
• 19:01
  And Amsterdam is always hopping, so there was a lot of street noise from people probably coming from the coffee shop.
• 19:08
  Stoned?
• 19:09
  Yeah.
• 19:09
  People forget how loud old town Amsterdam can be.
• 19:12
  A lot of rowdy folks at a lot of hours.
• 19:14
  I mean, people picture it being tulips and water, but it's a city where people have a good time and yeah, I can see that be a problem, but a lot of places don't have AC still in Europe because
• 19:24
  this is a growing issue that wasn't there even 20 years ago.
• 19:28
  So much yeah.
• 19:29
  And so we stayed in this little, very classic.
• 19:33
  It was a butcher shop at one time where the butcher lived above.
• 19:38
  Now it's a hotel with just two rooms.
• 19:41
  And unfortunately, because it has just two rooms, even though the man lives on site, he's getting hit with the anti Airbnb laws and having to pay really, really high taxes meant to drive Airbnbs out of business because they
• 19:58
  want to return more buildings to the housing stock.
• 20:01
  So we were his second to last customer.
• 20:04
  Oh, that's so sad.
• 20:05
  He was closing down.
• 20:06
  How long had he been in business, did he tell you?
• 20:09
  Since 2018.
• 20:12
  So lovely guy.
• 20:13
  Really enjoyed staying with him.
• 20:14
  I never thought about that, how some of these Airbnb laws might affect guest houses with very small room counts that sort of fall in those cracks.
• 20:22
  Yeah, it was nice.
• 20:23
  I wasn't even thinking about that.
• 20:24
  Yeah, yeah.
• 20:25
  So we spent four days in Amsterdam, then we went to Paris for a wedding.
• 20:31
  My cousin, gosh, more than 40 years ago, 50 years ago, probably went to Paris the week he graduated from college, fell in love with.
• 20:43
  He went to the opera, met a beautiful usher named Isabel, fell in love with her, they moved to Paris, lived there.
• 20:51
  He unfortunately passed away from cancer a couple of years ago.
• 20:54
  But it was his son's wedding.
• 20:57
  And it's a very special thing in Paris and in all of France, you cannot be legally married unless you go to a civil ceremony in the local Maori.
• 21:13
  And they actually read the Napoleonic Code as part of the ceremony, so it was all in French.
• 21:20
  A man with a tricolor sash, very dignified, read the code and gave a speech.
• 21:29
  And then we all went out to lunch and then we all went out to dinner, too.
• 21:33
  But lots of people have a church wedding.
• 21:36
  They didn't after that, but it was very old fashioned and very dignified.
• 21:42
  Yeah, I was going to say it sounds civilized and manageable, to be honest.
• 21:47
  Yeah.
• 21:47
  The bride and groom walk in, they sit in a chair.
• 21:50
  They do say I do to one another and kiss.
• 21:53
  But for the most part, it was just this man, you know, telling him what Napoleon felt about marriage.
• 22:00
  Always important, you know.
• 22:01
  Yeah.
• 22:02
  Or Napoleon's civil servants, probably.
• 22:05
  So that was one of the days.
• 22:08
  On the other days, we hadn't planned as much for Paris as we had for Amsterdam, and we decided to try and go to.
• 22:18
  Oh, my goodness, what is that?
• 22:20
  That incredible chapel that has Sainte Chapelle.
• 22:25
  It has all of these stained glass windows everywhere.
• 22:28
  And we thought, we'll just walk up to it because that's what I did pre pandemic in 2019.
• 22:35
  You just walk in and buy a ticket.
• 22:38
  There's a huge line now with people who have booked their tickets in advance, and then another line for the losers like us who hadn't booked tickets.
• 22:49
  And at that ticket line for the losers, they say, we cannot tell you how long this will take and we cannot even guarantee entry.
• 23:01
  What happened?
• 23:01
  I don't understand.
• 23:03
  But there are.
• 23:04
  There are that many more people in the world than there were in 2019.
• 23:08
  I think there are.
• 23:09
  Although it was interesting.
• 23:11
  So we waited for about an hour and a half, and we did get in after an hour and a half.
• 23:15
  And I gotta say, when we went into Sainte Chapelle, it was airy.
• 23:20
  There weren't that many people inside.
• 23:22
  So I have to wonder, maybe they're just letting in fewer people than they used to.
• 23:28
  For that attraction at least.
• 23:31
  My husband also thought he would go to the Louvre and couldn't find any tickets for the next day to go.
• 23:40
  Now, three or four years ago, we used to say, if you want to go to Paris, buy tickets for the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower ahead of time.
• 23:46
  But it sounds like you kind of need tickets ahead of time for almost.
• 23:50
  Everything now, for a lot of things.
• 23:52
  I did go to a beautiful exhibit at the Luxembourg Museum, which is a museum that only does special exhibits I'd never been to before, actually.
• 24:03
  And it was of Leonora Carrington.
• 24:06
  You know her, she's known as a Mexican artist, but she actually came originally from the uk.
• 24:14
  She was Max Ernst's partner for a while.
• 24:17
  These very surreal, spooky paintings of rituals and impossible beasts.
• 24:26
  And it's a gorgeous exhibit if it comes to your city, definitely go.
• 24:31
  So I was able to get.
• 24:32
  I was able to just walk up to that.
• 24:35
  So I guess it really depends.
• 24:38
  I also, I would just say don't take your chances.
• 24:40
  Anyway, yeah, I considered going to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which is a new museum for contemporary art, and that I could have gotten tickets a day in advance, but I would have only been able to get it for
• 24:59
  like 2 o' clock and 3 o' clock and later in the day.
• 25:02
  So I guess it really depends.
• 25:04
  We also went to Maison Gainsbourg, which is Serge Gainsbourg.
• 25:09
  Do you remember him?
• 25:10
  He was a pop star in the 1970s.
• 25:14
  A dear friend of mine, he had.
• 25:15
  A daughter who was an actress, right, Charlotte Gainsborough.
• 25:18
  Yeah, she actually narrates the tour.
• 25:22
  And a dear friend of mine, whose taste I no longer trust, said that it was the most incredible museum she'd ever been to.
• 25:32
  So weeks ago I got tickets.
• 25:34
  Cause it, too sells out.
• 25:37
  Oh, my goodness.
• 25:38
  Charlotte Gainsbourg speaks for about 10 minutes in each room, and it's this somnolent tour.
• 25:47
  And then dear Papa would unbutton one button of his shirt because he was very proud of his chest hair.
• 25:56
  And, you know, it was these weird remembrances.
• 26:00
  And if you don't care about the person in question, which, frankly, I didn't.
• 26:05
  She said it was such a great museum that I should go.
• 26:08
  Even though I didn't know much about this man, now I know a lot about him, and I wish I didn't.
• 26:15
  You know what you could have used at that museum is some space cakes.
• 26:19
  Yes, I should have.
• 26:20
  I should have.
• 26:22
  That's illegal in France, actually.
• 26:24
  I was curious.
• 26:25
  Okay, well.
• 26:26
  Marijuana.
• 26:27
  Yeah.
• 26:27
  They were swimming in the canals in Amsterdam.
• 26:29
  Were they swimming in the water in.
• 26:31
  Paris because of the heat wave?
• 26:34
  They were.
• 26:35
  I went to this place, this area called the Canal St.
• 26:38
  Martin, which actually is water from the Seine, which is highly polluted, and people were jumping off the bridge into this icky, greenish water.
• 26:48
  If you go to the Fromer's Instagram page, you'll see the video I took of all of these people having the best time ingesting E.
• 26:58
  Coli.
• 26:58
  Talk to them in a week.
• 26:59
  Yeah,.
• 27:02
  Yeah, it was crazy.
• 27:03
  And, oh, is that the same canal where Amelie was?
• 27:06
  Is the San Martin Canal?
• 27:07
  I think so.
• 27:09
  Yeah.
• 27:09
  I think so.
• 27:09
  It's a very groovy area of Paris with all of these cool boutiques.
• 27:13
  And we did stay in the Bastille area, which is really, really fun.
• 27:18
  A very young, groovy area.
• 27:21
  I once spent a New Year's Eve there.
• 27:22
  It was so much fun.
• 27:23
  I was in my 20s and it was the perfect time for that.
• 27:25
  Yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  No, it's a great area.
• 27:27
  But the craziest part of the visit was the last night we were there.
• 27:32
  The football team of Paris, Paris Saint Germain, beat Arsenal.
• 27:39
  So, you know, during the game, every bar, you know, had people spilling out onto the streets to watch this game.
• 27:47
  And we went out to dinner.
• 27:48
  We had a lovely dinner at a place called Clamato, which was great seafood.
• 27:52
  And then we walked back and thought we should watch the game.
• 27:55
  So we watched the game.
• 27:55
  Very exciting.
• 27:56
  We watched it from our room because we were a little nervous.
• 27:59
  Our daughter was across town with other friends who she knows in Paris watching it.
• 28:06
  And then she decided to walk back with them to our area, and she got to this street, this well square, where people were setting off so many fireworks that you could barely see.
• 28:20
  There was so much smoke in the air.
• 28:22
  And it felt a little dangerous because, you know, these fireworks were whizzing by.
• 28:27
  And so she, she and her friends decided, let's, let's get away from the square.
• 28:31
  And they started to walk away.
• 28:33
  Suddenly everybody around them was running.
• 28:36
  And so they started to run with the crowd a little bit and then they slowed down and then they realized, oh, my God, my eyes are running, my face is hurting.
• 28:46
  They got tear gassed by the police.
• 28:49
  Because they were mad at them, at the police.
• 28:51
  The police were trying to clear the square.
• 28:53
  So they.
• 28:56
  Put them in as much danger as the fireworks were putting people in danger.
• 28:59
  Exactly.
• 29:00
  Yeah.
• 29:00
  So 800 people were arrested in Paris that night.
• 29:04
  Yeah, it was, it was crazy.
• 29:06
  All night long it was hard to sleep because there were fireworks and people yelling on the streets and it was all joyous.
• 29:14
  But wow, was.
• 29:16
  It really sounds a little angry.
• 29:18
  It was, it was pretty crazy.
• 29:20
  It got a little crazy.
• 29:22
  It was joyous at the start and then it got crazier and crazier.
• 29:25
  Every place is a powder keg right now.
• 29:28
  Yeah, you just never know what's going to happen.
• 29:31
  No, you never know.
• 29:32
  But yeah, it was wonderful being in Paris.
• 29:36
  My daughter had never been to Montmartre, so in the middle of the heat wave, we trekked to the top.
• 29:42
  We actually used on fromers.com we have a wonderful walking tour that tells you more than the guides.
• 29:49
  I was listening to them and ours was much more interesting, much more dishy.
• 29:55
  And so, yeah, we went up to the top there, had a wonderful meal at a little bistro, and enjoyed Paris.
• 30:02
  You know, what could be better?
• 30:04
  Despite the heat and the crowds, you still found it as charming as you have always found Paris.
• 30:10
  I love Paris.
• 30:11
  I love Paris.
• 30:12
  I love any city that has as many bookstores as, I don't know, Chinese restaurants.
• 30:19
  It's just such a culturally rich, fabulous city with such beauty around every corner.
• 30:28
  Yeah, I never get tired of Paris.
• 30:30
  There's always something to see and do that's new there.
• 30:32
  And did you also observe that there are a lot more bikes?
• 30:35
  I understand that the cars are abandoning Paris and everyone's on a bike now.
• 30:40
  In the last five or six years, if you haven't been.
• 30:42
  Yes, actually, I interviewed recently.
• 30:45
  It'll be on the podcast the week before this runs.
• 30:49
  I interviewed Antoni Perowski from Queer Eye.
• 30:54
  He now has a show on Nat Geo.
• 30:57
  And one of the things he did was he went with a bike group up to the top of Montmartre.
• 31:04
  There are bike clubs in Paris that ride around together.
• 31:08
  And he told me that 70% of the families in France own bikes.
• 31:15
  It's a real cycling culture.
• 31:17
  I guess that's why they're so into the Tour de France.
• 31:20
  You know, it's part of their daily lives to bike places.
• 31:23
  And now that they've been given the streets to ride around in safely, it completely changed their behavior.
• 31:27
  Yeah, but you know, I guess coming from Amsterdam, which is even more of a bike city, I mean, what was remarkable about Amsterdam is hardly any cars in the streets of that city.
• 31:37
  It's mostly bikes.
• 31:38
  So it didn't feel that much after Amsterdam, but it was more than it was before.
• 31:44
  Fascinating how fast that even these old European cultures are showing evolution.
• 31:49
  At quite a fast pace too, it sounds like.
• 31:51
  Absolutely.
• 31:52
  Absolutely.
• 31:53
  So that was the trip.
• 31:55
  And thank you for letting.
• 31:57
  Letting me relive it.
• 31:59
  I love it.
• 32:00
  I love it.
• 32:00
  I love hearing these stories of all your trips.
• 32:03
  Yeah, well, we'll hear about yours next sometime soon.
• 32:06
  I forgot, I've got a London guide coming out for Frobers in a couple of weeks, so.
• 32:11
  Absolutely.
• 32:12
  Pick it up.
• 32:13
  Pick it up.
• 32:14
  Yes, definitely.
• 32:15
  All right.
• 32:16
  Great to see you, Jason.
• 32:17
  Thank you so much.
• 32:19
  And if you enjoyed this podcast, I have a favor.
• 32:23
  Please give us a good ranking wherever you listen, tell your friends, please subscribe.
• 32:29
  And if you are traveling, lucky you may I wish you a hearty bon voyage.
• 32:46
  Sour candy on the table Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants Watching cable well it feels so far away all the channels seem the same Trying to remember all the songs we like to play Cause those lazy afternoons don't come
• 33:15
  so frequently these days it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?
• 33:27
  I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake oh but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes.
• 33:50
  I can't get you off of my mind Looking out the window where we see Spend so much of our time Cuz I miss the way it feel But I guess you can't control those damn cards with dam babe
• 34:12
  I know the both of us are happy when we're free but would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?
• 34:23
  Wow, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?
• 34:32
  I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes.
• 34:54
  And I I hate the way it tastes But I love it all the same and I, I hate the way it tastes But I love it all all.
• 35:40
  Right.
• 36:42
  Oh, I know it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?
• 36:52
  I like you with your sour candy in the boathouse on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes it's been, it's been so long and I cannot help
• 37:10
  but wonder Are you ever coming home When I see you with this sour candy don't want it any other way oh, I just hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes.