Dammit - I mean Dam-it

Last night involved drinking etc. And choosing the wrong nightbus back, the one where you have to pay €4 instead of being able to use your tram multi-day card (hint: don't take a nightbus that has a number starting N - this ain't London). Dammit number 1.

This morning, breakfast, that meal where you get to see what your fellow guests look like. Uh-oh. Then wish you hadn't.

A planned meander with photo opps everywhere (there will be an album of the best sometime after I'm home), and a coffee outside the main theatre, people-watching, ended at what I now like to call "my coffee shop" (this is my second visit) to make a purchase for later.

Then a tram back to the hotel (no. 2 is better than no. 16, I find). After a short break, a wander into Vondelpark, very close to where I am staying. Heaving isn't the word. Well, ok, it is the word. Found a spot to sit and read and smoke. Would have loved Steve to be with me.

For some reason I then needed a nap.

After which I caught a tram again and visited a couple of bars. Very much like last night.

Except tonight, it started to rain. A few drops, then suddenly a full-blown storm, thunder, lightning, wind, the works. I'm wearing a t-shirt because it's been like 25 degrees all day, including when I went out for the evening.

I had bought a cheese and salami roll and a chocolate muffin on the way to the bus-stop, because I had forgotten to eat earlier (I have a habit of doing this on my solo holidays). I had researched the bus nunbering this time, and despite arriving at the bus shelter (and it was a shelter from the storm) just after a bus had passed so I had nearly half an hour to wait, I got myself outside my baguette, and listened to a bizarre conversation between two young Moroccan/Dutch girls who were sheltering with their bikes, and an extended Spanish family waiting for a bus. All in broken English. Hilarious.

Then, on cue, the 358 nightbus comes tanking down the road in the tram lane through the puddles. Hand out. Bus sails past into the storm. Bastard.

That was a 25 minute wait, and now I have another 30 minute wait. Bugger this. So I dash and find a taxi. That's €13 including the tip. So my 3-day tram card is working out quite expensive, all in all. Dammit number 2.

You may have remembered there was a muffin in the story earlier. I've just eaten it writing this.

Good night.