When I moved to Amsterdam in 2011, I arrived around 10:00am after being awake for 20 hours. Following advice from multiple people, I did not nap during the day. I struggled to stay awake before falling asleep at 8:00pm, and I slept until 10:00am. There was no jet lag after that - my body had reset, more or less.
I apparently wasn't so lucky when I returned from the U.S. on Thursday. I did take a two hour nap after getting to my apartment around noon, and I got another seven hours of sleep before going to work the next morning. I tried to "reset" as I had a year ago by going to bed at 10:00pm on Friday, and intending to get ten to twelve hours of sleep. It didn't work out - I woke up at about 2:30am, and I couldn't get back to sleep.
After an hour of sleeplessly lying in my bed, I decided that getting up was my best option. And I realized that I had a unique opportunity to wander around Amsterdam in the hours between late-partying and early morning risers. Only days after the solstice, the sun rose around 5:00am. So I grabbed my camera and rode around for two hours to look at the normally packed areas that were positively ghostly:
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| An empty Museumplein |
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| An empty Dam Square |
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| Outside of the maritime museum |
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| The IJ River |
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| A large bird walking away from the harassing guy with the camera |
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