I have less than positive feelings about travel days, a stress that I admittedly put on myself. The first day out is the worst, for everyone I imagine, but definitely for me. Double-checking that I have everything, remembering at the last minute what random non-essential I didn't grab, giving myself way more than enough time to catch my flight -- I have, more than once, waited in excess of 2 hours after getting through security. Though I have never missed a flight, I am not proud of myself.
And of course, security.
JFC, TSA. I would love to know if anyone has really done a full analysis of the before-and-after effects of limiting liquid carry-ons to <3.4 fl oz crammed into a clear plastic baggie. I wonder if the end of that analysis would be that we've all learned to become Tetris masters of lotion and toothpaste.
I have taken a few pages from the book of my boy George Clooney from the film Up in the Air, as far as packing and surviving security, and I have gotten my own check-in process down to a science. Still, nothing can ever *really* alleviate the pain of waiting half an hour+ in line, kicking your luggage the half-nanometer down the queue every time someone moves, waiting to step into a magical microwave that says whether or not you are a risk whilst praying that you aren't pulled aside because a random sliver of something in your pocket set off an alarm, and then hastily shoving your carefully separated things back into your carry-ons before you clog the conveyor belt.
In short, blah blah, screw you, it's a huge pain in the ass.
I will concede that there are some pretty neat things about the airport, post-security, though. Each airport has a bit of a personality. For example, PHL tends to be urban artsy:
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| Yarn-bombing small exhibit |
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| For the uninitiated, guerrilla crochet is, in fact, a form of graffiti |
Whereas Dublin International is holy balls green.
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| "Feck It Sure It's Grand" <3 |
Also, fact that I was not aware of -- Irish is an official language of Ireland. My ignorant self thought that it was just English, and that Gaelic was a language of an older time. But no. Not only is it NOT called Gaelic, Irish is still the first language of some of the peoples, as evidenced by the fact that all services were also rendered in Irish:
The flight to Dublin was fairly uneventful - all told it was about 6 hours there, which left me plenty of time for catching up on my Pixar (wow, I was not expecting Coco to make me cry that hard.) It was the getting off and the 4-hour layover that threw me for a loop -- too short to hop out and see Ireland, too long to be a comfortable layover. But, armed with a few books, I powered through, and it was time for my connecting flight to the Netherlands.
If getting off the plane in Dublin left me disoriented, touching down in Amsterdam left me doubly so. To put it in perspective, it was about 9:30 PM when I'd left the US, and when I was finally in the Netherlands, it was close to 4:30 PM. Airlines do... not do the greatest job of timing foodcarts around destination, instead, seemingly relying on something like an 8-hour time schedule, which doesn't really help the body adjust.
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| Also their offerings are garbage, so, you know, there's that. |
In short, my brain wasn't really *tired* when I landed, but I certainly was not aware of what time it was. Unfortunately, there wasn't much time to self-correct, as it was time to figure out how to make it to my hostel in once piece. Train-hopping time.
The metro/L-system in Amsterdam is... fairly easy to navigate. I will kind of get into that a little more when I swing back around to it again, but suffice it to say, I didn't have to work that hard to get into the city.
Zeeburg-Oost, where my first hostel was, is a cute little neighborhood in the eastern central part of the city. By sight, it reminded me a lot of Philly, what with the abundance of brownstones and bikes, as well as hidden pockets of of art.
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| I have no idea what the context is, but I love it. |
Granted, I didn't see much of the area and hadn't allotted any real time to explore, but what little I did see of the area surprised me with its relative ease. I walked around for a good hour with no real aim except maybe get some nibbles and take in the sights before settling in for the evening.
Hostels...? In Europe...? Isn't that where bad things happen? You know, like in that movie - "Saw"?
I assuaged their fears a little by letting them know that I'd be staying in female-only dorms. Even so, I had some lingering doubts, too. After all, I'd heard the horror stories - the real life ones, not the Hollywood embellished kind. Dumpy facilities, things stolen out of broken lockers, rowdy college students acting like Amish kids on rumspringa...
So when I was instead presented with this:
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| Stayokay Amsterdam Oost, for those curious/looking for a great place to stay |
Dang. Color me impressed. This place was swanky as hell.
My roommates were all also pretty cool folks. I spent an hour or so talking to one girl from Hong Kong about her travels through Europe (this was the last leg of her trip), the trials and tribulations of packing, and the godsend that is the vacuum bag (seriously, she was so jealous that I had them).
Soon enough, though, it was time for me to get ready for my next leg of the trip and turn in for the evening. Alas, the first part of that turned out to be much harder than anticipated...
When I'd first been planning this trip, I'd assumed that it would be easy enough to get everywhere I was going by train and metro. What I had not anticipated was public transit strikes in Paris and some surrounding areas in France. Several major hubs were simply just shut down, and several regional rail trains had arbitrary schedules that were published every night. This complicated things significantly, as one of those hubs would have been a connecting train for me from Belgium to France.
I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for coach busses.
A big thank you to my boy SK for helping me find OUIBus, a subsidiary of the French national rail system that apparently was still operating completely independently of the strike. I managed to find a 9-hr ride for about 20 euro, which suited me just fine.
Farewell for now, Amsterdam!
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| Sloterdijk Station |
And, again, throwing expectations out the window, the bus ended up being really nice.
As we passed through the Netherlands and Belgium, I was greeted with a few fair sights. Largely fields and some windmills, a hint of a town here and there, but a peaceful way to pass the time, all the same.
And, really, I confess to sleeping most of the way down. After all, a girl's got to conserve her energy for the City of Lights.
Up next: Bonjour, Paris!
Until the next.
P.S. Relax - there were no hurricanes (though there was torrential downpour for much of the bus ride). It's a song. The title of today's post is a song.
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