Biker babe

Okay, so I wrote the last entry on Tuesday, but posted it Wednesday, so I have to go back to catch up on Tuesday's events. I got to Rotterdam and met my friend there at the station, had a glass of juice to wake up a bit, then we went off to see the town. She used to run her own company of 'city hosts' to take people around the city, so it was fun to have her as my personal encyclopedia of knowledge about Rotterdam and get to hit the highlights of the town really quickly :) I got to see where most of the city was wiped out in WWII and the few remaining buildings, take a water taxi through the harbor, and walk through the shopping area. We only had a couple hours, because the plan was to rent a car and drive back to her house in Oostvorne, and the rental place closed at 6pm. So we picked up the car, which was quickly named Yoko, and I silently prayed I would remember how to drive a manual transmission without much trouble!! And I did - huge relief! It was fun to drive again, and helpful to have Eveline to navigate me through the city. We got to her house, changed into comfy clothes, and headed out on bike - very Dutch - everyone rides bikes everywhere here, it's so cool - to the beach! Beautiful day, we walked for a bit, then realized we had to get food at the store before it closed at 8pm, and it was 7:45 and we were 2 miles away! So we ran back to our bikes, and hoofed it to the store- my poor legs didn't know what hit them, I hadn't ridden a bike in ages, and here I am going as fast as I can! It was fun though, and we made it just before they shut the doors to get some wine, cheese, hummus and bread, and ride back home. :) Decided then to go back to the beach with the wine and watch the sunset, which was soo nice. We had a lovely time chatting and relaxing, and trying to take photos jumping off the sand dunes, resulting in really bad pictures and much hilarity. When the sun had set, Eveline said, well we should head back, you've got the bike with a light. And I stood up, the blood rushed to my head and I said, um, this could be interesting, I've had a bit too much wine on an empty stomach!! We managed to get back in one piece - fortunately it's a small town and there was no traffic. It was quite funny to get off my bike and not be able to walk so straight - that was a new experience!

Wednesday morning I got up and drove to Culemborg for my meeting, which fortunately wasn't too hard to find - no thanks to google maps, who haven't quite figured out how to give directions within Holland. Getting back was much more of a fiasco, but I made it! Worked a little more from Eve's house, then we loaded up Yoko and headed to Amsterdam. Eve is going to San Francisco for 3 weeks, so she had all her bags ready to fly out and I was all set to fly back to the UK, so it was a perfect how our timing worked out. We got to Amsterdam, returned the car, checked in our hotel, and went over to the city center to meet another one of her friends for dinner and a drink. I was completely shattered at this point, haven't slept very much in the last week, so I was ready to go back to the hotel at 10. I'll have to come back sometime to do more of a wild Amdam night maybe.

I missed my flight this morning because I forgot to allow enough time to walk from the hotel to the train station...I sure hope I'm getting all of these stupid mistakes out of the way in one trip, I can't handle going through the mania of this one again. I had to pay a fee and rebook for the Amdam-Stansted flight leaving 30 minutes later, so I'm now on the train back to london from Stansted, which is further out than Gatwick. Sigh. At least I'm almost there, and will be at work soon.