Our accommodations here are... well... quaint. No, that's not even the proper word for it. We're staying in a hostel (The Flying Pig), because I figured that might be the "fun" route for a city like Amsterdam, although I failed to take into account the fact that we'd be exhausted and not up for partying all night. The room itself is small, but luckily it's also private, so we didn't have to worry about tons of noisy roommates or the chance of our belongings being stolen. Our walls are bright orange and there's what reminds me of plastic window decals on our windows depicting a nature scene. We're on the third floor and have our own bathroom, which is great, except for the mildew-y smell, but we're tough.
Our journey began early Sunday morning (Elia woke around 5 a.m. and I woke at 7 a.m., but we both had restless sleeps). We went to get food for the first part of the journey and there were some tearful goodbyes as well, but then we were on our way.
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The first flight was relatively fast for the three-and-a-half hours it ended up being, and we burned through our stash of magazines pretty quickly, trading them across the aisles and likely annoying the old couple who insisted on sitting in the aisle seats, even after Elia offered moving so they could sit together. Of course, we got stuck next to those people. Also, the guy slept half the flight, not only snoring but also using the arm rest, so I felt like I had been squeezed into my seat. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily?) the guy next to me at the window was Mr. Chatty McChatterson so he talked to me for maybe half the trip, on and off.
We arrived in Minneapolis at 3:30 p.m. local time and only had 45 minutes to exchange our money, eat lunch and find our gate before boarding began. We managed to find a Subway and got sandwiches, and right after we finished, the boarding began.
Our flight was supposed to last eight ish hours, but because of strong tailwinds, we arrived at 7:30 a.m. and not 8:19 a.m. Due to the timing of our flight and some other factors, we didn't really experience much of a night either, with the sun always on the horizon of some sort. Most of the flight looked like we were sailing over clouds, and our morning descent into Amsterdam was beautiful.
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Once at the airport, we got off the flight and headed through customs, which was super quick, and it appears as though the Dutch have their own system of profiling, stopping random people in the "no goods to declare" line to see if they really did have goods to declare.
We quickly found a place to sit and Elia went off to call Rich while I scanned faces, looking for my cousin. We checked out a bathroom (which was decked out with orange, scented toilet paper, no doubt due to the World Cup match set to take place that afternoon). Eventually, we decided to follow the signs to the "Meeting Point" which set us near the trains.
Before too long, I decided to check back at the arrival areas for my cousin, in case we had missed him. And after a few minutes of searching, I found Jos and Femmie Schekkerman. Jos is my second cousin once-removed who - until less than a year ago - knew nothing of our existence and vice-versa. He lives in Alkmaar, which is slightly north of Amsterdam, and made a special trip down to the airport to meet me, which was awesome. He and his wife took us out for breakfast at the airport, and we got to talk about ourselves and our travel plans.
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After chatting for a bit, we parted ways (they had to prepare for their own trip to Spain the following morning), and then we proceeded to wait in an annoying long long ticket line to purchase train tickets into the city (as the automated ticket machines only accepted cards, and not our Visas).
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Then it was on the the train (which conveniently arrived three minutes after we bought our tickets, and which inconveniently was so booked we had to stand with all our bags by the door) which was about a 20-minute ride into Amsterdam Centraal.
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