31st of August

Perhaps taking a transatlantic flight that arrived at 8 in the morning was not the smartest decision we'd ever made. The flight itself was quite nice, Coach was underbooked, so Scott and I had the whole row to ourselves, which we attempted to utilize for napping as much as we could, though that proved to be as futile as sleeping on airplanes usually is. Not that the flight was boring or tedious, since Continental saw fit to provide us with a staggering variety of entertainment options, including board games that you could play with other passengers (Scott trounced me at backgammon) and 300some movies of every variety. Scott watched some zany Chinese film and I watched The Italian Job, the original one. So, while we weren't bored while failing to sleep, it hardly mattered by the time we arrived at Amsterdam Schipol, 1am our time. We caught the train to the city center easily enough, and made it to the hostel without much delay, only to find that the cleaning crew wouldn't be done until 2pm. Reasonable, butunfortuate. Resiliant, we dumped our bags in the luggage room and ate breakfast there, then went out in search of coffee. Getting european espresso again was heavenly! We decided that despite coffee and breakfast, actually visiting a museum or site was probably going to require too much from our addled senses, so we walked about the city instead. Found a perfect place to sketch and took the opportunity, too. I plan to ink the pencil and then return to the spot and watercolor it.

After a while though, the double espresso was bound to wear off, and it didn't gradually either. No, all of a sudden, while visiting an english language bookstore, the familiar loathesome all-nighter headache set in. It was only 1-ish, but we made our way back to the hostel, me clutching my head, Scott insuring I didn't stumble into anyone. At the hostel we got water and food while we waited for our room to be ready, so we could end this sleeplessness once and for all. When 2 finally rolled around, we dashed upstairs only to find that maybe the room wasn't actually clean yet. We asked, and were assured that they were done and we were fine, but soon after, another couple of cleaners came by to apoligize that no, it wasn't clean yet. So by 3 we finally closed the room-darkening curtains and passed out with an alarm set to wake us by 5. Not only do you get whatever alarms you set, but you also get the belltower ringing the time. It's got a great ring, I'm going to try to get a video of it, cause it's lovely. Regardless, we went out for dinner, Thai, and then spent quite a lot of time wandering around the city. There's not really much else to do after 5pm, when all the museums and churches are closed. Ideally I should turn that into prime sketching time- the sun doesn't set until 7:30-ish...