You know that Seinfeld episode where Jerry realizes too late that he has agreed to wear the ‘puffy shirt’ that Kramer’s girlfriend has somehow asked him to wear? As he sees the actual shirt for the first time he is stunned and utters the phrase “I agreed to wear this?” “When did I agree to wear this?” Well, as I gazed at my ‘houseboat’ accomodation, specifically the confining, minuscule ‘lower living quarter’ I had my own puffy shirt/houseboat moment. I thought “I agreed to stay here?” “When did I agree to stay here?” This isn’t what I signed up for. I am not here to affront the owner of this houseboat- he may be a very earnest, serious, and compassionate man. I have no idea, insofar as we spoke on only a few occasions. However, as I gazed around at the train wreck of a houseboat (sorry for the mixed metaphors), at the tiny, cramped closet of a space and the ‘sleeping area’ that frankly reminded me more of a coffin than a bed, I could not believe that someone would offer such a sparse and utterly lackluster accomodation and call it an apartment. Calling this place an apartment is like calling someone who can count to ten a mathematician. In fact my thoughts, after being downstairs in the confining, cramped quarters, were that hostages in Lebanon might have stayed in places like this (ok, not exactly like this, they probably had worse wifi!) not vacationers looking to relax and see Amsterdam. The bed, for example, is wedged between the outer and inner wall and virtually takes up what feels like ½ the space of the whole ‘apartment’ to use the owner’s term. To make matters worse, much worse, is that the ceiling over the entire bed is approximately three feet high- in short a claustrophobe’s nightmare, one MRI meltdown from fleeing in terror, except instead of spending 30- 40 minutes in a highly anxious, heart pounding state of mush, you will be lying here 7-9 hours each night wondering if the damn ceiling is gonna fall on your head. I never considered myself a true claustrophobe before, but after spending two nights- two very very long nights, I think this place should come with a black box warning, sort of what they place on certain prescription drugs to warn people of untoward or dangerous side effects. “Caution, staying here for more than five minutes may cause severe panic attacks.” With a living space of about 4 feet by 5 feet, there is no where to sit (there are no chairs) and almost no space for your stuff. So I just piled stuff around the place and ironically found it was harder to find things in this molecular jungle than it would have been if I had 10 or 20 extra feet. When you wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (here is a plus- the bathroom is about two steps from your bed) you...