Milan airport

Still in Milan

While sitting and waiting in this airport, there is the obligatory news on the tv and we are able to see how naked women were protesting Berlusconi’s running for office, and that Mt. Etna had erupted.  We just sailed past this volcano on the ship two days ago right past the other volcano.  Mt. Etna had been


Mt. Etna covered in clouds (or smoke)



engulfed in clouds, which were probably smoke coming out of it, now that you see the eruption.  While going past them both, I had asked John “Wouldn’t it be cool if they erupted just a little?” and he emphatically answered “No!”  But we weren’t far off from being there.  If you haven’t seen the footage of 800 meter tall geysers of lava, look it up.



Stromboli volcano



We finally are able to board our plane at 10pm after the plane has arrived, everyone has moved into line and down the ramp when the airline realizes that this crew has been out too long and they have to bring in a new crew.  So, while John and I were not going to go stand in line until movement happened, we still got to stand in line for 25 minutes while the crew changed.  At least, we were not at the end of the metal tube that probably 100 people were stuck in and if you had any kind of anxiety problem would have caused a melt down. 

                Once the crew change happened, we started to board and it was “old school” boarding.  We stuck to go outside in the snow and climb up two separate ladders at the rear and front of the plane to board from two sides.  Now, with VERY minimal carryon and two ways to enter the plane, you would think that boarding would go faster, no?  But, no, it did not, so you get to stand out in the snow for some period of time and slowly board this plane.  The captain made it clear that they were not expecting to have to do this flight and you got the impression that he didn’t want to go to Amsterdam, but we were going to taxi and de-ice anyway.  John looks at me and says, “I don’t want to be on this plane,” in the saddest, most solemn voice that I’ve ever heard from him and I couldn’t help feeling the same.  But after a very uneventful one hour flight, we landed in Amsterdam without any problems.  John and I were punchy after a whole day of travelling across Italy and were laughing at everything that was happening on the ground and on the plane.

We taxied past a plane with the name “Kids and Co” with cartoon characters painted on it and pictured Doogie Howser as a captain and little kids as stewards on the plane.  We saw huge terminals with ramps leading directly to the plane and I was glad that we were going to disembark out of the elements, but as we taxied to the ends of the earth to the Easy Jet terminal, we saw that this was not to be.  John has determined that the only thing Easy about Easy Jet is “easy for them is what they mean”.  We sobered up quickly when getting to the baggage claim and finding that everyone’s luggage had beaten them to the claim because we were in BFE for landing.  Once we had our luggage, we just decided to take the train into Amsterdam and went for the station called “amsterdam central” because we knew that our hotel was in the city center.  We didn’t know if the Metro would still be running when we got there or if we would have to walk, take a taxi.

Amsterdam Central station was still bustling at 11:30pm at night and we didn’t get to seen any views of Amsterdam because it was so dark.  John decided to ask a taxi driver about the charge for taking us to our hotel because we couldn’t find the metro stop for it on the map.  Well, that was because we were at the metro stop for our hotel and the taxi driver was nice enough to tell John that we had a 5 minute walk to the hotel.  We took off with our luggage and took a wrong turn that brought us past many food places that were still open and several seed banks.  I thought at the first sign that it was interesting that Amsterdam had sperm banks that were present in downtown and then the smell hit me.  I didn’t realize how pervasive the use of marijuana would be here and how you wouldn’t have to move far to run into it.  Now it made sense that all of the food places were open so late because most likely they are waiting for everyone to get the munchies. 

                We found our hotel and noticed that they had made a lot of security protocols most likely to keep high people from wandering into their hotel.  You need your room key to enter the bathrooms in the lobby, the elevator, your room and to turn on the lights in your room.  I swiped the key and turned on the lights, but forgot to leave the key in there, so the lights turned off on us 5 minutes into the room and we were tripping over things to get the key again and get it in the holder.  Yes, even with all of this international travel under our belts, we are idiots.  I had booked this expense hotel in the heart of Amsterdam because I knew we didn’t have much time here and wanted to see a lot of sights quickly and had planned on hitting the red light district on this first night, but we were exhausted.  We took a shower and fell into the bed which was heavenly, so the money did some good.