Venlo - Bling Ass On

The second weekend of November, we took a road trip down to Venlo. Venlo is in the southeastern part of Holland, very close to the German border (in fact, we nearly drove right into Germany when we got lost one time).

Venlo has a pretty turbulent history. During WWII, British intelligence agents were kidnapped by the Germans in Venlo in what is known as the "Venlo Incident", where the Nazis linked Britain to an attempted assassination of Hitler. The Nazis used this as justification to invade Netherlands, which was neutral during the war. Despite this chaotic history, the city is really boring. But our friend Joep lives there, and when he invited all of us for a weekend of mountain biking for the guys and boar hunting for the girls, we were intrigued. The girls decided that we would prefer getting massages at a spa in Maastricht, a very cute nearby town, to boar hunting, and thus a deal was struck.

We hitched a ride with Will and Em on Saturday morning. After some traffic and a very difficult journey as all bridges into the city were closed, we finally arrived at the Aveda spa(albeit pretty late to our appointments). Luckily the spa was absolutely dead, so we didn't have any problems keeping all of our appointments. Jen, Jane and Sascha arrived shortly after us, by which time Em and I were already in our bathrobes getting our feet rubbed. We all got our respective spa treatment, drank 3 bottles of the champagne we brought, and ate the salad lunch that the spa prepared for us. Eventually, we realized we had been at the spa for over 5 hours and we wanted to put our clothes back on. There were no windows in the place since we were in the basement, so we were shocked that it was so late. We were antsy and a bit drunk from the champagne, and there were no spa workers to be found. Eventually we decided to take matters into our own hands, and Em knocked on the door of the room where we had left our clothes, then marched in, interrupting a massage. This was immediately after Em and Jen had taken to playing drums in the waiting area. We were so embarassed and giggly from interrupting a massage that we didn't even hear Jane trying to tell us that our clothes were put in a different room. Finally, after another hour of yapping and sitting around in bathrobes, Jane tries to tell us again that our clothes were in a different room, and we say "Why didn't you tell us before!!" and go get dressed. Clothes on, we still don't have our bags and phones b/c they've been locked up and there is still no one to be found, so we decide to try out the makeup samples. We piled it on and thought we looked amazing, but we probably looked horrific. Eventually, we make our escape, meet the boys who by this point are none too happy with us, and drive to Venlo. This is also when we get lost and drive to Germany.

The boys were exhausted from their mountain biking, and the girls were also pretty beat from sitting around in robes and drinking champagne all day (he he) so we had a pretty chill night. We ordered Chinese take-out, played drinking games and the Wii and listened to some tunes. Eventually we all passed out on our air mattresses.

The next morning, we were slow in getting out of the apartment. Jen and I had a battle royal on the playstation with some random fighting game (we were just pressing buttons at rapid speed, much how the way girls usually play video games). When we finally motored, we drove to the Venlo city center for some coffee. The town was dead. We spotted a cafe and sat down for some coffee and some food.

After lunch, we made our way back to our cars to drive home. This is where we spotted the most awesome sign on a store window - Bling Ass On (see photo above). We had no idea what it meant, and it was too perfect to let go. Venlo is so weird.