The long morning after
I woke up at a godawful early hour... 9 AM... I looked outside and the view was just absolutely stunning. Arnaud's appartment overlooks the IJ and the waters looked eerily tranquil in the early morning fog. The photo I took doesn't do it much justice, really.
I can't have slept more than three hours, yet I felt surprisingly awake and full of energy and though I tried getting back to bed, I just couldn't sleep anymore. Fast forward three hours later and I find myself sitting at the breakfast table with the hangover slowly kicking in, looking red-eyed at a rather pale Arnaud. Damn, we're getting old... we're just not used to this anymore...
After a hearty breakfast I drove home, did the traditional New Year's day visit to my mum, uploaded my photos on Travbuddy and was just about to lie down on my couch with the intention not to get up anymore for the rest of the day, when I received a text message from Devika asking me, no, *ordering* me to come back to Amsterdam and join a small group for a post-meetup dinner.
Wendy had arranged some tables at the Humphrey's restaurant, which -not entirely coincidentally- was also the site of the first ever Amsterdam meet-up in January '08. Via a 'six degrees of separation' way of inviting someone who invites someone else who invites someone else we ended up with nearly 20 people.
We even had an honourary guest in the form of Keiko (keikocreative) who hadn't been to the NYE party, but came to say hello at the afterparty, adding another nationality to the already impressive list of countries represented list of the meet-up week.
It was a really nice way to close the Amsterdam meet-up extravaganza which for some people had started on Tuesday with Ket's karaoke thing. The only disadvantage of the party on the boat for me was the fact that I'd hardly spoken to anyone for more than 5 minutes at the time, so this dinner was a nice way to catch up with some of my TB mates who I'd barely talked to the night before.
Time flies when you're having fun and before I knew it it was past 11 and tiredness kicked in. My legs felt as if I'd just run a marathon, and by the looks of it most of the group felt the same. So last hugs and kisses were passed and everybody went their separate ways again.
PS: the dinner photos are not mine, they are Keiko's. As usual I forgot to bring my camera :)
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