I recently headed out to my artist residency, Phoenix Athens, in Athens, Greece, and added a short layover en route in Amsterdam. The flight sequence to Athens from Sioux City is really long; my trip back will take about 24 hours in transit. Add in jet lag on top, and that sounded like a lot to handle all at once. I’ve also never been to Amsterdam so it seemed like a good idea to check it out, burn off some jet lag, and trim down the flight time by lopping off a few hours and saving those for later.

I arrived at my Airbnb in Amsterdam around 11am; check-in wasn’t until 2pm but they let me store my luggage until then. It was up 4 flights of stairs, so I was happy once they were fully upstairs! I then took a tram to the Waterlooplein Market, planning on looking for antique tiles I want to use as an artwork substrate. I found a few but none of the type (or in the quantity) I wanted so I then walked to a section of the city center that had a clump of antique stores and asked at each of them. Eventually, I located the perfect store and bought 12 antique tiles and tile fragments which I want to try to use, and 1 additional “sacrificial” test tile as I need to figure out how to remove the glossy surface of the glaze in order to increase the archival nature.

At that point, I was quite tired and really nauseous. Jet lag can present as nausea, so I decided that was the likely culprit. I was also carrying 13 tiles, which is not insignificant a weight, so I decided to return to the Airbnb, drop the tiles off, take a (hopefully short) nap, and then go back out to explore and have dinner. The room was quite hot as the weather was unseasonably warm and the place I booked didn’t have A/C, but I was tired enough that a fan was sufficient and I took a 90-min nap. Then I went back out and explored more of the city center, had a vegan sushi dinner, walked past the Anne Frank house, and toured a part of the red light district.

The following day, I visited the Nieuwmarkt and the floating flower market, walked De 9 Straatjes (The 9 Streets), took a canal tour, and ate at a vegan burger bar. By the next morning, I was still a bit jet lagged, but it was much better - and I was off to Athens!