Twelve Hours in Amsterdam

A few postcards are coming. I'll get to everyone, no worries!

I think I’m really glad I booked my flight to Venice with that twelve-hour layover in Amsterdam. I say “I think” because for one, I’m so incredibly exhausted that thinking in itself is a task (if my café wicker chair wasn’t so uncomfortable, I’d be sleeping now…revision: if a year later I wasn’t still paranoid out of my mind that my whole life in the form of a bag would be stolen AND if my chair wasn’t so uncomfortable, I’d be sleeping), and for two, being that incredibly exhausted makes cramming a city into half a day a ludicrous feat. Regardless, I got to see it, and I’m happy. 

I met a girl named Shannon waiting for the same train at the airport. She might be one of the most bad-assed girls I’ve ever met: she just returned from a two-month rock climbing trip in Africa while camping out and cooking animals her friend hunted over the fire (Yeah). Her layover was twenty-two hours so we talked for a while coming into Amsterdam Centraal. Turns out she’s a feline geneticist with a lab focus on phenotypic traits. Yep, turns out that’s a thing people do.

So I tried holding a conversation with her about her job (mostly me head-nodding) and all the animals she ate in Africa (more head-nodding cause I had no idea those animals existed) and then how she got mugged in Cape Town (bingo, enter conversation). But all in all we’re just two very different travelers, which is why we parted ways when she went to go find tickets for a concert playing tonight and I went on a canal boat through the city. 

Along the canal

I could probably live here

I still have five more hours until my flight to Venice and I’m not sure where I’ll wander next, but the sun is finally out so I better take advantage.