Dam

Some random thoughts from a hotel room in Amsterdam:

• Yesterday was an excellent day. We took our friend Lee up to Pilatus, a mountain just outside of Luzern. We oohed and aahed at the views, had an invigorating hike, and even went for a toboggan ride. We even made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Zurich for dinner instead of going directly home. So, all in all, a good day.



• I'm of Norwegian descent, and the part of me that isn't Nordic is a hodgepodge of English/Irish/Scottish/etc. So I come from a long line of pasty-complected people. I get sunburned if I see a picture of the sun in a magazine. So naturally, yesterday I was an idiot and didn't wear sunscreen. Now my face is beet red and I fell like my head is on fire. Good way to start a week of meetings.



• When you're already feeling sunburned and hot, there's nothing like being in an airport where they haven't yet figured out the A/C situation for the season.



• I've become what I always vowed I wouldn't: a business class snob. Today I was waiting in line to get ticketed and a bunch of people in a tour group just marched right in front and wouldn't let anyone else get tickets (and the good folks at Swiss naturally didn't intervene). I just know that someday the bad karma of my getting aggravated is going to come back and bite me on the ass.



• My stomach has been unsettled all day, and boy is that fun when you want to spend a few hours walking around town.



• Since my stomach is unsettled, I ditched my plan to get Indonesian food for dinner (Amsterdam is famous for its spicy Indonesian food). So what did I get instead? Thai food. Further proving that I'm an idiot. (Although I have to say that since I got pad kratiem (garlic and pepper chicken), it actually wasn't that spicy. But still.



• In my haste to get ready for my trip, I forgot to bring my mobile phone charger, and naturally my phone has almost no charge left. Normally not a big deal, but with Gretchen being in Paris it's pretty inconvenient. Which, yet again, proves that I am indeed an idiot.



• I've only been to Amsterdam twice before, both times in the winter. So my impression of the city is that it's beautiful but dark, cold, and wet. This time it's light, warm, and dry (at least until tomorrow). And there are thousands and thousands of people out in the streets--I'd forgotten what it was like to be someplace where stores open on Sunday.



• Took a quick spin through the Red Light District after dinner (c'mon, everyone does it!). My impression from previous trips was that the ratio of tourists to drunken Brits to strung out junkies was maybe 3:1:1. Maybe I caught it at a bad time, but this time it seemed more like 1:2:4. Much seedier and a bit more menacing than I remember, but maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon now.



• Yesterday was Queen's Day, which is evidently cause for celebration. The entire city looks like the day after Mardi Gras.



• Did I mention that Gretchen is in Paris?