Troy University Athletics
A Traveling Broad: Amsterdam, Day 2
8/5/2009 11:45:00 PM | Basketball (M)
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
A Traveling Broad, Day 2 Amsterdam
Another day in Amsterdam. To tell you the truth though, I saw enough in one day to last me a lifetime. Yesterday actually seems like two separate days it felt so long. We saw Amsterdam in a nutshell with windmills, cheese, canals, parks, museums, street performers, and the list goes on and on. All that AND I got two short naps and posted all my stuff on Facebook and this site. No wonder I slept like a baby. Well, the Advil PM probably helped a little too.
But there really is something to this biological body rhythm thing. Even though I was really tired when I finally went to sleep after midnight and slept nine solid hours without rolling over one time, when I got out of bed at 9AM local time and my mind realized it was really 2AM back home, I was ready to get back in the covers! The bags under my eyes were ready, too! I'm getting there though. Probably about the time I get home, I'll be used to this time and have one heck of a time adjusting back!
I'm thinking about renaming the blog "Alyson's caffeine detox, day whatever." It would probably sound something like this: "Hi! My name is Alyson and I'm a coke-aholic..." I broke down and bought a Coke with my bacon pancakes yesterday (which were fabulous!) and savored every drop of it. Not sure how much it cost me, but it was worth every Euro. Think about small juice glasses with no ice and that's about as much as I got. Luckily the fountain drink was cold. At dinner I ordered sprite and got a cold small glass bottle (the ones like my mother tells us she used to get for a nickel and still got change back) and was lucky enough to get two cubes of ice in my glass. I kid you not...two cubes of ice!
Speaking of money...wow! There is paper money and coin money of all different denominations. The tricky thing though is that the 2Euro and the 1Euro are coins smaller than quarters, but a little thicker. Then there are 50, 20, 10 and 5 coins that makes up the "change" part of the money. So you can drop about $6US with the drop of 2 coins. It doesn't take long for it to add up and then you're wondering...dang, where'd all my money go?
I'm trying to pace myself and haven't spent more than 25Euro now that I count my monies, but all I've purchased has gone in my mouth! We took a taxi yesterday and spent about $30US on one short trip. Needless to say, we've learned which tram to take for about 2,60Euro, which is probably close to $5US. Finding the correct tram is a totally different story.
Let's put it this way, the exchange rate, without commissions and fees is at $.61 or so, which means they'll give us 1Euro for 60US cents. I'm not really good in math, but I don't think being on this side of the two-for-one is very profitable. In addition, Bob, the tour guide, says the recession has hit pretty hard around here as well.
Breakfast in the hotel was amazing this morning. They had the random assortment of hot breakfast foods you'd find at the Hampton Inn as well as other nice things: fresh patries that will melt in your mouth, smoked salmon, Nutella, and champagne to name a few. Now before you go getting any ideas, I didn't try the salmon! I couldn't resist the champagne though. Just a tad to say I'd had a champagne breakfast in Amsterdam. It wasn't all that great anyway, really.
The whole team took a canal tour on a boat today, the hottest day ever recorded in Amsterdam. That might be an exaggeration, but it was definitely hot and the sun was bright and close. We got to see the city from a boat and it is one of the things you MUST do if you ever visit.
It is fascinating to see the locals riding their boats of all shapes and sizes around the canals at all times of the day. Yesterday evening we saw many boats full of people with wine and dinner, just floating around without a care in the world. It was like a parade.
"People watching" is another interesting pasttime that I enjoy on trips. Boy, are there ever the people to watch here! It's more like a sport here there's so much to see. This is way better than the Atlanta airport. And even better, they can't understand you.
Game recap:
We won! The Trojans are 1-0 in Europe. We played a team of locals in Urk, which is located an hour from here. The gym was nice, but they didn't have any tables to tape on so I had to tape 20 feet on my knees while they sat on the end of the bench. I told the coaches that this was the reason I always got the single room! Luckily that was the only work I had to do during the game, other than pay real close attention to the statistics so I could write a great story. This is totally off my head because there was no box score or stats taken and since it's so late, Coach Curry has the only copy of the stats and he's catching up on his beauty rest (be glad). So here goes, a la Alyson-style:
The final score was 138-72. We started off slowly, as I think some of our players were still trying to find their legs. It was a close first quarter, score-wise, but we came back and led at half time by 20 points. Thankfully, I didn't have to convert the points to American like I've had to do with the money, distance, temperature and pretty much everything else while we've been here.
Just to set the tone, the Orcas are men of 20-almost 40 that play basketball for the fun of it. They have families, jobs, and normal manly responsibilities on top of getting together with some friends two or three times a week to play ball. It would be similar to Troy's Recreation Department getting together with Goshen or Elba's recreation departments and having friendly competitions on the weekends. They enjoy getting the opportunity to play college teams as much as possible. It's a win-win situation, really.
Nobody fouled out, or even got close that I can remember. The officials were great! Nice looking too, which is saying a lot. One of the officials had been officiating games last week for the Israeli National Team while they were playing in Europe. The coaches all agreed they were the best international officials they'd ever experienced. Something about Canada came up, but that was before my time so I didn't pay much attention.
The leading scorer was probably Brandon Hazzard, to nobody's surprise. Bernard Toombs played a great game, especially since he hasn't donned a TROY jersey in more than a year. He shot the first of the free-throws for us, but I'd venture to say we still have some work to do in that department.
All eleven of the guys got some playing time, with Regis Huddleston working a mean left hook from the paint. Coach Maestri is keeping all the options open for the five spot to figure out who will replace Tom Jervis. (That statement is not entirely true, but I chatted with Tom on Facebook today and told him I'd work his name into the story. There you go, Thomasina!)
Regis did have a good game, though. Just not at the post. I think he plays the wing, but I'm not entirely sure about that. He has been shooting exceptionally well in the few days of practice and that held true in tonight's game.
I took some video and some clips from the guys and coaches on the bus post-game and will try to get that put together for tomorrow. I might even try a little voice overlay with some play-by-play, you never know.
I feel obligated to say something about all the other players as well, but it's so late (1:40AM local) and I have to be up early in the morning. I'm sure with three more games to play and maybe a few stats in front of me, I can manage to do a better job tomorrow night.
We're touring the Anne Frank House in the morning. Hard to believe we're walking on streets that she walked on as a child! That just blows my mind!
Game tomorrow night, but probably won't post much here until we get to Belgium the following day. At the very least, I'll let you know the scores and such.
Bob Hubrecht, our tour leader for Basketball Travelers Inc. has a blog as well. He lives in Antwerpen, Belgium, Diamond Capital of the World if I recollect. I've included a link somewhere on this page so you can see his pictures and what he has to say.
Have a great day! This traveling broad needs some sleep!
GO TROJANS!
ASteed
P.S. I'd be remiss if I didn't wish Coach David Felix a Happy Belated Birthday. He completed another trip around the sun on Monday. I'm sure he could list a million other things he'd rather have been doing other than sitting in the airport and flying across the Atlantic Ocean!
Also, a friend of mine in Missouri - the biggest TROY fan in Missouri, I might add - is another year younger today: Happy Birthday, Wade!
