Amsterdam

Our last day in the Netherlands before we fly back to the States

I woke up at some point in the night and felt what seemed like a pimple on the top of my head. I thought I should squeeze it but I was half asleep and so decided it could wait until morning when I actually got out of bed. By then I’d forgotten all about it and Tim and I were getting ready to head out for our last full day bopping around Amsterdam. But then I felt it again and asked Tim to look at it. This is what I heard “Oh, Ummm and Oooh, let me take a picture and show you”. While I’m thinking, if you can see it just pinch it for me.

Then he says “I think it’s a tick.” And he showed me the picture. It was a tick. (We didn’t include the pic for obvious reasons. We’d like to keep you all as readers) First off I’m glad I didn’t attempt to pop it myself. Ewe! Next we flew into action and I found some antibiotic ointment in my bag and Tim smothered it. Then we waited……..he didn’t move. (Do I in fact know it was a he? No, but sometimes you just go with what feels right).

Still not moving. More ointment will surely keep him from breathing. As we are working through how to deal with this dilemma, Tim says “Maybe he’s getting oxygen from your blood” Really!? Really right now. When did Tim become the scientist?

Back to real time, a quick Google search recommends pulling the tick out slowly and carefully with some tweezers at the tick’s head, where it is embedded into the skin. We can do this. We can do this. I chanted. Tim has one job to do. He’s tugging at the tick, not wanting to pull too hard and leave its head in my scalp and he’s so careful not wanting to cause me pain - he says “It’s not budging”.

I countered back with a lot of optimism and encouragement, “Babe, you just gotta try harder. Pull that tick out of my head. Please.” Luckily, the second time is the charm. Phew. Tim got it out and we’re pretty sure we got all of it. But he had to lay down first as he was getting a little lightheaded from the whole operation. Once his blood pressure normalized, we could finally get on with our day and go find some coffee.

So off we went to find coffee and breakfast and do the tourist thing. And oh yeah - we found all the people. And did you know? Amsterdam has bikes too! And little cars, trams, canals, shops, some huge wooden shoes and lots and lots of tourists. So here are a bunch of random photos from the day.

One more night and we fly home tomorrow :-(

The hallway outside our hotel room. Notice the Exit sign says to RUN!

The view from our hotel room. That’s the Rijks Museum in the background.

Just my size

This bakfiets (cargo bike) has a rain cover to keep the little ones dry.

Sometimes the little ones aren’t all that little.

And now, Tim here… Just in case you’ve not seen enough bikes yet, here are some clips from today at about 5:00 pm. I think you could call this “Rush Hour in Amsterdam”.

(And here’s something to give you an idea of how much traffic this was: In the video from last month in Utrecht, there were a lot of clips that I edited the “slow” spots out of to avoid empty stretches. For these clips today, I didn’t edit any gaps. And one of these original clips was over 3 minutes long with non-stop bicycles.)