So glad to hear you all made it to Europe safely. What an amazing trip you are taking with your girls! I can't wait to read more. 😉
AMSTERDAM
- By : Cynthia
- Category : Vacations - 2009
Vacations - 2009
6
In the above photo, you’ll see our first glimpse of land as we approach the airport in Amsterdam. It was certainly a welcome sight after being on the airplane for about 9 hours by the time you figure in the actual flight and boarding time. I told the girls this is a good experience for when we take an even longer flight somewhere else hopefully in the next year or two.
The first thing we noticed is how incredibly green everything is here.
We all enjoy water activities so it was fun to see the boats on the river as we approached the airport.
Because we had such a short layover here there wasn’t much time for stopping to take pictures of all the things you’d never find in our airports in the States, but I had to stop to take a picture of these men and women selling cheese from a little cart in the walkway.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect on this layover since I had received several conflicting reports.
We didn’t use a travel agent to book any of our trip, but I did have to go to AAA to get my international driver’s license. While I was at the AAA office doing that paperwork, one of the agents insisted I try to change our reservations stating there was NO WAY we would ever make our connection because she said we would have to claim our luggage, go through customs, and then go to the ticket counter to recheck our luggage and go through security again. I quizzed her on this quite a bit because I had read mixed reviews on some travel sites I frequent.
I ended up calling Delta/Northwest and while they couldn’t confirm anything they said if we checked our bags all the way to Paris we should not have to gather them in Amsterdam which made more sense to me than what the AAA lady was saying. The Delta/NW agent said the only real way to find out would be to try to call someone at Air France which I did try to do once and then decided it wasn’t worth the time on hold and we’d just figure out when we got here. But again, because the AAA lady was so adament this would not be the case I was a bit worried.
So, we arrived. We didn’t have to fill out any of the paperwork that you have to fill out when going through customs when going back into the US, but we did have to go through a customs line to get to the next boarding gate, but we didn’t have to pick up our luggage. The line moved very quickly with a different line for different types of passports. So, Michaela went to the line for those with EU passports while we went through the line for US passports.
They also had a line for those with connections less than an hour from departure. Our was about 50 minutes so I asked the lady at that line if we should go there and she assured me we had plenty of time for the regular line. She was right.
We easily found our next gate and even had a few minutes to spare so we were able to find a bathroom – downstairs. I’m guessing now that we’re in Europe we’ll find most of the bathrooms downstairs instead of on the main floor. And, for those who are wondering – yep… lots of stairs and very few escalators so make sure your knees are in good working order before taking a trip to Europe.
The flight from Amsterdam to Paris was only an hour. I slept for 3/4 of the flight….again.. no surprise there (LOL). They served juice and sandwiches which were quite tasty. They had a different kind of seasoning sauce on them.
In no time at all we were landing in Paris which is still a bit hard to believe. We’ve been planning this trip for 5 months and now that the time has finally come it just doesn’t seem real that we are actually in Paris. I’ve always thought it would be fun to take the girls or the entire family and here we are. AMAZING!
A quick note for Tim – The girls and I have talked a LOT about you so far! We’re very appreciative of your hard earned $$ that affords us the opportunity for this type of trip and we’re thankful that you’re ok with holding down the fort at home with the boys, school, etc., while sending us off for a few weeks. THANKS. You’re THE BEST!
