With my wife in such good spirits from last night I had high hopes for today. We could leisurely make our way to our bike tour and finally see the other side of Amsterdam that we’d heard so much about. However the look on my wife’s face as we woke up told a story I didn’t want to hear: she was struggling in just the same way as she was before. I figured we’d try to make our way through breakfast at least before calling it quits. On our way back up to our room though my wife called it and slumped down on the bed, crippled by nausea and pain.

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I stuck around for an hour or so to make sure she was ok before I left to do a small tour of the surrounding area on my own. Our hotel was right next to a local park, one that many had said was worth a walk through. The quiet rustling of the trees and low ruckus of children playing in the distance was a nice background to me hunting for photographic inspiration. There wasn’t a whole lot to be found there unfortunately although there might be a few shots in there that will keepers if I put enough work into them.

Afterwards I headed back to see how my wife was doing. She was still bundled up under the covers and didn’t stir when I opened the door. After a while she woke back up and said she was feeling a little better although her face was still that same distraught look that I had seen earlier that morning.

I decided to take care of our laundry then since she wouldn’t be up to doing anything else for the rest of the day. After a few wrong turns I did manage to successfully find the laundromat that came highly recommended on Google. The reviews were spot on too, our week’s worth of clothes washed, dried and folded for €17, a bargain compared to what any hotel would charge. On the way back to pick it up later in the day I did manage to snag a few more photos, one of which adorns the top of this post.

Upon returning with 2 bags of fresh clothes my wife seemed to be feeling a lot better and so we decided to get ourselves some takeout from a local Mexican place. It reminded me a lot of Zambreros from back home, the imagery and designs very reminiscent of each other. The food was very good and the cheap Trappist ales that I picked up at the local supermarket even better. It was a nice way to cap off our final full day here in Amsterdam, even if it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I first booked our holiday.

Tomorrow we’ll make our way to Berlin by train. Hopefully our second train journey will be just as luxurious as the first although I’m sure there’s as much variability in trains as there is with planes. We likely won’t get up to much else as we won’t get in until 7PM or so, one of the few downsides when it comes to long distance train travel. Still it’ll give me time to catch up on my reading and maybe a few other things that I’ve neglected.

Honestly it’ll probably just be nice to not be walking all day for once!

About the Author

David Klemke

David is an avid gamer and technology enthusiast in Australia. He got his first taste for both of those passions when his father, a radio engineer from the University of Melbourne, gave him an old DOS box to play games on.

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