This is a lot of traveling! It's a good thing I've pretty much been writing as things happen, because with so many airports and so little sleep, I'm not likely to remember everything!
Picking up where I left off, though, I met my friend on the flight to Amsterdam shortly after my last entry. Her name is Elisa and her daughter's name is Regina. They are from Italy! They had been traveling to Michigan where they were going to spend the summer in Troy. When they arrived in the U.S. though, they were interrogated and the immigration officials determined she needed a work visa to enter. Even though she was there for travel. She said she had come to the U.S. many times for work with no trouble, but of course the one time she was there for pleasure, she runs into trouble. Poor thing. They had flown Italy --> Amsterdam --> Detroit then in the Detroit airport they were questioned, and sent back on a flight- the one we were on. They hadn't been outside in over 26 hours and all their travel plans were cancelled. She was devastated (hence the crying.) She was even going to go to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. They weren't supposed to leave until September! I felt so bad. I hope they find a way to salvage the trip. She was saying they may be able to expedite her visa and them come back. I said we need to do a house swap!
Finally, though, we landed in Amsterdam. We put our big bags in lockers, got tickets for the subway-like system that runs from the airport into the city, and exchanged some money from dollars to Euros. Each person converted $60, for a total of $300 to approximately €45 each. It took us a very long time, but finally we made it out of the airport.
We made it to the Central Station in Amsterdam, then went on a covered boat tour (1 hr.) of the canal system. It was super cold & drizzled the whole time.
After the boat tour (which was pretty cool! We saw a lot of bridges, got a sense of the architecture of the area, saw how significant bikes are here, saw the Anne Frank house, and learned a lot of random information I hadn't previously known) we went to lunch @ this chic little place called Flame across the street. I had a yummy sandwich that had salmon & eggs. By the way- the STOP signals on the street crosswalks here have countdowns. Learned that by thinking we had 30 seconds to cross a street & that actually being when cars were coming! :0
After lunch we went to a crêpe place across the street for some dessert! I had a vanilla latte & Jamie & I split a Nutella crêpe! It was quite delicious.
At that point there was not much more we could do without either walking or paying for transportation, so we headed back to the airport.
We walked around the airport some, to keep everyone from awake as much as possible. Now we are sitting in a lounge area, most of the students sleeping, waiting for our flight. About 4 hours or so until we leave.
Apparently the airport only gives you free wi-fi for two 30-minute segments. A fact I did not know until I used them both :/ So now I have to figure out how to tell people when the flight leaves!
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