I don’t get the feeling this “coffee” shop sells much coffee, maybe soda, chips and candy bars, but the real bar is at the end of the room, with a man wearing a dealer shirt and a few shelves full of weed behind him for our viewing and purchasing pleasure. Steve casually buys some and we use Dad’s new pipe. Prices are damn decent and so’s the product. The coffee shop is in the red light district, didn’t see any of the expected sex workers in the windows but apparently the city is trying to “straighten up its image” and reduce the numbers of smoking and sex work establishments. Great, ruin the one city that doesn’t criminalize activity that should be a matter of personal choice. Hopefully Amsterdam lightens up, or at least the locals don’t enforce the issue. At least we’re here now, and weed’s legal medicinal purposes in California anyway. I suppose less tourist gawking of the sex workers might be a safer for them, I’ll learn more before I make judgments.

Headed to the sweet ass hotel that was offering its rooms at 1/4^th the price, (lastminutehotels.com), and enjoyed delicious Belgium beer compliments of Steve. Amsterdam is great so far, and it doesn’t hurt that this is the first place in three weeks where everybody speaks and understands English. Not that being in non-English speaking countries was all that much trouble (it was mostly fun and humbling), but it is a lot harder to get around and buy tickets when nobody understands what you’re saying. After having stayed up till almost 5am now it’s time to get to bed and look forward to morning coffee. Actual coffee.

Finally made enough pleading noises to get us to the Aquarium zoo and it was awesome. We got to touch the coy and see jelly fish, sharks, snakes, porcupine fish, mambas, bats and monkeys!! Little bitty monkeys that some little boy fed hamburger bun and then got to pet them! I was a good person who did not feed them any food (I didn’t have any) and followed the rules and did not pet them (seeing I was without food they would not come near me). Then we walked up to the very top of the aquarium zoo tower and saw all of Vienna (this zoo was built as a skyscraper… very eerie and full of tons of water). Vienna is really, really full of buildings. Massive buildings that fill entire blocks and each of them works of art, literally as far as the eye can see (and at 10 stories high the eye can see a long way). On the way down the tower we found another room with more monkeys and bats. I didn’t mention before that both halves of this huge exhibit containing monkeys and lots of other types of birds and even some bats were completely open. There are signs saying don’t touch or feed the animals but everything is fully open with birds flying at our heads, bats flying around and monkeys climbing onto benches and the walkways trying to get food from people. I’m not even clear on how all these animals are able to cohabitate but they seem to. There are even water exhibits within these huge open areas — filled with alligators, biting turtles and all kinds of fish. Awesome insanity. Oooh there was one space for children to poke their heads up into a bubble and look into an aquarium that simulated the ocean. So I joined and fit better than they did, the little shrimps.

After leaving the wonderful and exciting water zoo I dragged dad down into the next door torture museum. It was terrible and way creepy. Wax people in all kinds of torture devices, with an English version of the device descriptions to help us experience more horror. I cannot believe I got Dad to pay for this. Not only was it terrible and depressing but it was ridiculously short. If I’m going to pay to be horrified I want it down properly and for a long enough amount of time. Some of the torture devices we saw include but are not limited to the following: thumb screws, stocks, being burned at the stake, being boiled alive, the iron maiden, the iron maiden chair thing, the wheel and many more that I don’t care to remember. Having escaped the torture of the torture museum, we found a hidden grocery store and bought some wine and cheese to go with our crackers. Headed back to the hotel for Dad’s nap and my internet surfing. Currently chilling on very comfortable beds in the nicest hotel we’ve been in on the whole trip. Lovely and relaxing, can’t wait to experience a soft bed.

“Friendly Pompeii” as the signs say, is a 2000 year old city preserved by volcanic ash. Preserved as in paintings within the buildings are still intact and plasters were able to be made out of the hollows people’s bodies made in the 20 feet of ash that enveloped everything. Soul soaked ruins. There are literally plaster molds of people on display who are in positions obviously caused by being enveloped in volcanic ash. When the area was excavated they poured plaster into the holes where they knew bodies were so we could see their death poses. One man was praying, and a dog looked like it had been having a fit. Dad bought an audio tour so he could learn all the history and a book about the place too. This is the first place he’s been completely excited about so we followed him around the ruins while he told us tidbits of history, and even gave us the audio bit so we could hear about the brothel and the amphitheater. The brothel had intact pictures of sexual positions to inspire clients. The room with doggie style painted above it had one of the many stray dogs of the ruins sleeping inside. There were graffiti carvings on the walls that have been translated as describing the beautiful women of the time, as well as complaints from clients about having contracted venereal diseases. The amphitheater was not as impressive as the coliseum, but experienced plenty of bloodshed nonetheless and the audio guide gave a rendition of the sounds of music and fighting that would have been heard within it. That part was actually a bit strange. So after many hours we climbed our way out of the maze of ruins, bought some meloncello and headed back to Naples to shower off our films of volcanic ash and grab some dinner.

Dinner was fantastic, with real pizza, pasta and prosciutto with melon. Then we walked off into the dark in search of ice cream to go with the meloncello we bought in Pompeii. Finally found some spongebob ice cream (vanilla with sprinkles) and skipped back to the hotel.