A Very Memorable Weekend

This weekend we hosted Erika's cousin, Elizabeth, and her boyfriend, Peter. Elizabeth and Peter are both studying at Cambridge, so they are ridiculously smart and we tried to communicate with them through a series of grunting and pointing, and they helped by drawing pictures for us when we got too confused and trying to limit their vocabulary to 1- and 2-syllable words for us. Plus, Peter's actually British, so everything he says sounds intelligent anyway.

Anyway, we spent Saturday on Rob's patented Amsterdam Walking Tour and then they spent Sunday seeing the various museums in town. It was a great weekend, but not without a little excitement. Needing a break from the mindless walking and turning around (all part of Rob's patented tour), we decided to enjoy a nice canal cruise. The weather was nice enough and the views from the canals are quite lovely. We should have suspected something was amiss, when we first laid eyes on our Captain, The Ancient Mariner. He was a nice guy, but was somewhere between 90 and 150 years old. The way these tours work is that a tape plays in 4-6 languages pointing out various buildings and other attractions and The Captain waves his hand in the general direction of whatever the tape references. Everything was fine until one of the passengers decided to partake in one of Amsterdam's main attractions (not the one in the Red Light District. The other one.) We're not really sure what happened next, but suddenly, as we were making a 90 degree right turn into a narrow old lock, The Captain and The Stoner got into some sort of fracas at the front of the boat and one of them- we think The Stoner- triggered the fire extinguisher. Now, here is what these boats look like:

(Note, this is a pic of a different company's boat, not the boat we were on.)

So you see that the boat is encased in glass. When the fire extinguisher went off, it went off until it was empty, completely filling our boat with white smoke. There are tiny windows that slide open on every other seat and (the smart) people stuck their heads out to get some fresh air. Everybody else got up and ran to the front of the boat. In the meantime, The Captain had opened the door to let the smoke out, at which point The Stoner jumped through the door and onto the lock and walked off into the city like nothing happened. Oh, and the boat bumped into the lock pretty good, too. Luckily, all the crazy people now crowding The Captain at the front of the boat didn't seem to rock the boat or try to escape. A few minutes later the smoke dissipated and we were on our way. Everyone was laughing and standing and knocking the chemical powder out of their hair and clothing, but here was the most amazing part: The Captain continued to give the tour. The tape never stopped and as soon as he could steer again, he was right back with the pointing, like nothing ever happened! Or like it happened all the time... We were a little too concerned during the event to pull out the camera, but here's a pic of the residue:


Finally, the tour ended, everyone filed out (no tips for our man this time) and did a thorough pat down on the docks. The tourists that were waiting for the next boat suddenly weren't too sure they wanted to go and The Captain's coworkers all huddled around, trying to figure out what happened. We don't speak much Dutch, but it was pretty clear that even The Captain wasn't really sure. Some of the customers seemed to want some kind of explanation or recompensation, but we figured that was enough excitement for one day. Well, most of us did. We didn't get 50 yards away when Erika found herself on the receiving end of a pigeon's, um, delivery. Yeah. Poor Erika, covered in chemical powder, which we could kind of taste a little, and then besmirched by a flying rat.

But wait, it gets worse. These things always come in threes, and later that night as we ran to catch a tram, Erika tripped and dove, Superman-style, along the pavement. She's okay (though we did miss that tram). You know you've had a rough weekend when spending 3 hours on Sunday doing your taxes is the least stressful event. Still, despite all the bad luck, we had a great time showing Liz and Peter around and look forward to seeing them in England sometime. Though, maybe without the fire and the pigeon droppings, if that's not too much to ask.