Missing An Entire Country

 As is apparent, I'm always creating new challenges for myself to fuel my posts on this long-suffering blog (Proust, Pessoa, Marcus Aurelius, Faith, 2025 Books Read, next year's 2026 Films Watched). Consequently, and especially since I dropped off of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (a couple years ago), I've been devoting more time to the blog (and even if I'm the only one who reads the silly thing it's still time well-spent). However, it dawned on me that there doesn't seem to be anything here relating to the Netherlands (which used to be tagged as Holland for some reason). Seriously, there was only one post, from fifteen years ago, relating to an even older trip. I mean, I haven't spent much time in Amsterdam, but I have passed through there. So why don't I have anything? On Janet and my first trip to Portugal together we passed through Amsterdam on the way back, and I know I sent pictures to people, but I couldn't fine any on my phone. I popped back onto Facebook on the sly (partially for reasons relating to this summer's move), thinking that I must have posted something there, but there was nothing. Bizarre. Maybe it's locked away in a file somewhere - or on my camera, maybe? Weird. It's like an entire country disappeared. One of my goals is to try and sort out where those pictures are hiding.

By way of recompense to the Dutch here's a picture that I snapped during our crazy trip back from Portugal (matched only by the nightmare of getting to Portugal) as we passed through Amsterdam. It was a 100 degrees, and, allegedly, it was the only time it had ever reached triple digits in the country's history (which I don't necessarily believe, although I remember people talking about it at the time).