I was an excited rush when I left work today. The children looked at me strangly as I danced around the room. I was home by 2:50pm, and Ants and I had left home by 3:15pm, right on time.

Because of Ants’s bad back, I had to carry all the luggage (well one wheely-bag, and one day bag with the laptop in it) but I didn’t mind because we were going to AMSTERDAM!

We arrived with plenty of time to check in and relax… or so we thought. Check in did not go smoothly, and we found out that our KLM flight had been cancelled. GAR!! Then we spent half an hour of waiting in line with a very very slow lady rebooking peoples tickets. Finally we were booked on a British Airways flight that had been delayed from a 4:40pm take off to 5:50pm. Great, only 20 mins wait.

So we go to checkin with British Airways. Another 20 mins and we find that there are about 10 or so people in line that are in the same prediciment as us, and had been booked on the same BA flight. We get near the front of the line, and find that the flight had left, as schedualed at 4:40pm. It was now nearing 5:00pm. Not happy at all. The American in front of us (who we overheard – how we knew that our flight was stuffed up) was told to go back to KLM ticketing and get our flights rebooked. He said “there is no way that I am waiting in that line for another half an hour”.
We chipped in and said “We’re supposed to be on that flight as well, we’re not leaving this line until something is done”.
Then we see the other 3 people who were ahead of the American guy, and a bunch of others in the line all chipped in as well. BA had a mission on their hands, and we were not leaving the line until it was solved. One of the customers started yelling at the ticketing agents, and they jumped up for security straight away. 5 mins later security wandered along with their huge massive guns. They were heavily armed, and that scared me a bit. What if one of them had a meltdown? Or an epileptic fit or something? That would be scary.

Anyway, BA took all of our tickets and re-booked them – taking about half an hour in the process, and we were booked on a flight leaving 6:45pm. Then the flight was delayed, before we even got our ticket, leaving 7:45pm. Gar. So much for having dinner in Amsterdam. Oh well, at least we were booked. And we got £10 of dinner vouchers, so we went through customs and had Nachos for dinner.

Finally our flight was called, for boarding at 8:00pm or something, then it took forever for them to get us boarded. Finally we were off, and wheels up about 8:20pm. The flight was surprisingly short – only 40mins. Was quicker than going from Wellington to Auckland. All that hassle for a 40min flight. Ants and I just don’t have luck for flying. I’m glad we’re going to be going to Paris at Christmas time by train.

The light meal on the plane was a chicken wrap. I very much enjoyed it. I also enjoyed watching the lights passing underneath me, and seeing how amazingly bright some of them were.

We landed at Schiphol aiport, and then there was a half hour taxi to the terminal. Bloody hell what a mission. I found out later that there are 6 runways at Schiphol, and they are all quite far apart from each other because of it being added to lots.

At least there were signs, and many of them in English. I had worried about how we were going to get around without knowing any Dutch. In the terminal there were also these two guys:

Catching the train to Amsterdam was easy, and only 15mins. Nice smooth ride – it reminded me of the Amtrak in USA.

Anthony happy he’s on the train to Amsterdam

And finally we were there at Amsterdam Centraal. We walked out the wrong way, and ended up near the harbour lol. Turning around, we went back through the station, and we were out in the fareezing Amsterdam air. The first thing that struck me was the bikes. Now I knew there were a lot of bikes in A’dam, but I didn’t know there were that many!! There they were, all piled up and chained to the railings. What a weird site.

We went straight to the hostel Aivengo Youth Hostel which we’d booked through hostelworld – a website well worth looking at, no matter what part of the world you’re going to.

The hostel wasn’t far from the station, but the weird thing was, our room was away from the hostel! Our room was in a little alley way about 2 mins walk from the main building. Talk about weird. But nice, because it kind of felt like we had a little apartment of our own in A’dam.

Little alleyway by our room

Erik and Giffy were waiting for us, and it was so so good to see them again.

The room was large, with 2x sets of bunk beds (which I was sad for, because I thought we got 2x double beds, but oh well). It was cold in the room too which wasn’t so nice. On the website, we were told that we would get linen and towels. The linen consisted of a bottom sheet and a throw. That I was not impressed with, because we would have scavanged up some sleeping bags if we’d known. It was 11:00pm A’dam time, by the time we got to the hostel and sorted ourselves out. It was also too cold to go out (at the moment) so chatted and went to sleep. I was disappointed that we didn’t get in at the time we were supposed to, because we missed out on a night out in A’dam. Dumb stupid flights.

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For the interested

Netherlands

Amsterdam

Current Mood: annoyed & cold