WorldTravelReynolds

It was terribly windy this day when they took this picture. something for a laugh!

Today started out as the typical debark the ship and head to the next adventure, in this case traveling to Amsterdam, Netherlands from Copenhagen, Denmark. We were excited, however, this day took adventure to a whole new level! We left the ship around 8:30 am. Piece of cake. We waited on the free shuttle bus to the Metro along with what appeared to be 1/2 the cruisers on the ship! Good thing our flight isn’t until 2 pm. No need to panic, we have time. Taking the metro with the luggage is cumbersome but $10 USD vs. $60 USD helped us overlook the bulky luggage. If you will remember from a week ago, we walked almost 2 miles to the ship over cobblestone and uneven ground because we tagged along with a group of British folks and they decided to walk. Piece of cake they said, just around the corner they said. Ha!

Saw a Fox!

Let’s just say they were in the same line we were in for the shuttle bus when returning. So, after about 3 buses and waiting in the rain, luckily light rain, we made it to the metro. The train arrived so quickly we just jumped on with our luggage, which is pretty manageable right now, without buying a ticket. Hopefully they don’t check tickets. We managed to get off at the connecting station to board the train for the airport. Purchased a ticket this time and when I saw the price of 72 dollars I freaked out. It would have been cheaper to take a taxi. Then I realized, oh yeah, thats Danish Krone (DKK) and it was only $10. Whew!

So, tickets bought and we are off to the next train. Had a nice walk into the airport but thats about to change. We had already checked into our flight, British Airways. All we had to do was drop off our luggage. Every country has a different way of doing this. In this case we had to go downstairs to the “baggage hall” to drop off our bags. The email I was sent from British Airways said to go to 87-90. So we walked to that area. But.. that was Turkish Airlines and I sure didn’t want our luggage ending up in Turkey, unless we are going with it! The nice gentleman said keep walking. You’ll see it on the left. It wasn’t too bad, we had to walk about 20 more stations.

We were more than 2 hours early for our flight so when we got to the counter, the agent didn’t want to check us in. There were a ton of people in multiple long lines forming around corners. At the moment, we didn’t realize we were going to have to join them. Not sure why we thought we would be exempt? The agent came back and said we need to get you checked in because you will have over an hour wait to get through security. What? Are you kidding? Yep, thats what the long line was.

Sugar is 2 cubes to a pack!

After almost 45 minutes, we get close enough to see where they are running our bags through the scanner. Take your laptops, iPad, kindle reader, phones and place them in a tray. Take your liquid items and put in a plastic bag. Small bottles but different from the USA. USA allows 3, 1-oz bottles in one bag per person. Copenhagen and UK allowed all the 1 oz bottles you can fit in that bag. These people had them packed! Lady picks it up, looks at it, as if she can tell whats explosive material and whats not, and says ok. After we get our backpacks back through the other side, I stopped the stop watch. It was 1 hour and 6 minutes. But wait… theres more! We move on to the next room and theres another line. UUGGHH! They are checking/stamping passports here. Good news is they segregate the EU Shengen zone passports from everyone else. This dropped our wait time to about 20 minutes until we got though this task.

Here in Europe, you don’t receive a gate assignment until 30 minutes before your flight so we sat down for a drink and just to rest. Our bodies were starting to slow down and couldn’t wait to get on the plane. Walking isn’t too bad but standing for an hour an 1/2 is hard. We sat across from the Leggo store. I had forgotten that Leggo’s were invented in Denmark. They had some interesting Leggo’s but very expensive. By now, after drinking a nice cold coke zero with ICE, which is hard to find in Europe, we had a gate assignment but, the flight was delayed. Started out about an hour but increased after we sat down. When we were almost to London Heathrow, our connection flight was rebooked because we wouldn’t make it in time. Because we were coming from a Shengen zone country and the UK is not part of it, so we had to pass through security again to get our passports stamped. Thats not a big deal but why would we have to send our items through the scanner again. It was just unbelievable.

This BMW was so gold and shiny in color, surely it wasn’t the standard color

Left London, finally, but another 20 minutes delayed. We arrived in Amsterdam at 9:30 pm. We should have been here around 6ish. We stand in yet another long line to have our passports stamped in Amsterdam. And when people are waiting an standing, the patience goes out the window. Ours included. I fussed at a few people for jumping the queue (line). It didn’t help. We then find our luggage and then start looking for the train. Had to ask a couple of people but found the main train-line that would take us to the Central Station. When we tried to buy the tickets we couldn’t locate the final stop of Noord station on the screen so we had to find someone that could help with that. Our frustration level was pretty high by this point. I’ll give Chuck credit, by now, we wasn’t into let’s just figure it out, he was asking directions from everyone!

Man walking into co-ed bathrooms. If you notice there are good doors from the floor up on the stalls.