My husband chats with people all over the US and Europe on an internet board. We've had many lovely meals with people he knows online when we've visited their cities, or they ours. Last month we made arrangements to meet an online friend for dinner in Amsterdam. Before we left we were concerned to hear he was taking two days off for our visit. We immediatley tried to nip that in the bud saying we weren't sure of our schedule, only have 2 1/2 days etc, he jokingly said "don't flatter yourselves", that he had other errands to run during that time frame.
The day we arrived we arranged to meet him late the next afternoon once we'd returned from Keukenhof Garden (which, thankfully it turns out, he'd already been to a few weeks before). We took a canal cruise, visited the Ann Frank house, walked a bit of the town with him and had dinner. We treated him to all the activities, thankful to have his companionship and a native guide.
After dinner he said he'd meet us the next afternoon! Neither of us quite knew what to say, but were both thinking we needed to be cranked up to the max to charge through museums, some of Rick's walking tour, etc on our one remaining day.
We didn't want to be rude so we said we'd meet him the next afternoon. We ended up just racing through the first part of the day so we could meet him later, only to be 30 minutes behind our agreed upon time, losing him while he went to get a beer while waiting on us, getting to the museum he'd suggested too late to get in, and paying for another dinner!
Anyone have any gentle but direct words to tell someone it's been nice meeting them, but we'd now rather spend the rest of our visit on our own?