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A traveler gets lost in Amsterdam

"Goddammit," Flo muttered to herself, "how do I always do this?" She had planned this grand trip to Europe, wanting to enjoy and explore her freedom after a bad break up and here she was, as she always seemed to be: lost.

She had been enjoying the latest stop on her Europe tour, Amsterdam, until now. She had had a tour of the canals (somehow none of the layout of the city stuck with her), had spent a ton of time at the Rijksmuseum (which she now couldn't tell you how to get back to), and had taken a cycling tour that had tested her muscle memory (of course she remembered none of their route now that she had to).

If she had splurged on international data, this wouldn't be as big of a problem. Sure she could open Google Maps and see the tiny blue dot that was her, but what good was that when she didn't know where her hotel was? Why hadn't she taken her friend's suggestion to pick a hotel close to some big tourist landmark?

Now she needed to find somewhere with Wi-Fi without using Wi-Fi. Seeing no better way to do it, she picked a random direction and walked in a straight line. Even though her brain was somewhat fogged over with self-frustration and admonitions, she could still appreciate how pretty of a city Amsterdam was. Flo had always loved being near water and hoped, one day, to make a home in a city with a lot of it. There was also a real sense of history to the city. Although, she had to admit, she could do without the headache-inducing clouds of pot (to be fair, some, if not most, of that had to be because of tourists).

After spying a particularly pretty building, Flo reached into her bag to pull out her camera. She snapped a picture and a light bulb in her head lit up. She started scrolling back through her photos and realized she could retrace her steps. She turned around and headed back to where she'd said, "Goddammit."

When she got there, she looked through her photos. She saw that she'd taken a photo of the weird coat of arms with three xs on it that she'd kept seeing all over the city (surely it didn't mean what she thought). She looked around and spied it off to her left. She walked over to the coat of arms and pulled up the next thing she'd taken a photo of: a long string of bikes parked along a canal. She saw a canal just up ahead and she went over to it. When she got to the canal, she saw that the bikes were on the other side and to the right. The next photo showed a shop with a blue storefront that seemed to sell only cow-related things. Scanning the surrounding area, she spied a blue shop with a large cow in the window just down the canal. She hurried there and followed her next photo to the Tulip Museum and then the next to a cheese shop that had a very generous amount of free samples.

She kept up this pace until she made it back to her hotel, tired but proud of herself. Flo had always been glad that she'd taken a ton of photos. Mostly because she liked knowing that while she couldn't guarantee her memories would always be preserved, she could be pretty sure that her photos would be in some way or another. Some of it was also because she thought mugs, and mousepads, and such that had personal photos on them were great gifts to give to people. And some of it was she found it a fun way to share her experiences and interact with her friends and family. But she never thought it would help her find her way through a foreign city.

"Thank god for my obsessive picture-taking," she said to herself as she lay down on her hotel bed, relieved and no longer lost.

(Prompt by Kimisha Cassidy)

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