More European Travel Stories in the Works

In my last post, I laid out ledes (opening paragraph) for three European travel stories I am working on. Here are three more:

• In London, on the thirtieth and last day of a month long trip to Europe, we found Gesus (pronounced “Jesus”) who would liberate me and my wife from shopping boredom (but alas, not from our sins of gluttony committed over the last month) and show us the way (past purses and shoes, the fabric department, and the Christmas shop, and finally to a good Chinese lunch at a reasonable price.
•  It only took us thirty minutes to drive from our hotel to his place, but when we arrived, we learned that his body had been found floating in a lake, along with that of his psychiatrist.  They said he had been declared insane just the day before.  Apparently they were right.
• I was enjoying my lunch, gazing out the window, past the tourists inspecting the tulip bulbs in the Bloemenmarkt, toward the other side of the Singel, when Mary Jane rode by on a beater of a bicycle, a joint pursed between her lips, trailing a stream of marijuana smoke behind her.  If I had been in Des Moines, I might have been shocked.  But this was Amsterdam, where you can buy a “Cannabis Starter Kit” in the public flower market.