No Plane for You and No We aren’t from Here

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We knew the day was going to be long, what we didn’t know was it was going to become 2 days. Neither of us slept well. Susan still didn’t feel great after last night and then we had to wake up early so that we could get on the shuttle to the airport. We arrived at the airport and we were the only ones from Viking taking TAROM air (the Romanian airline) Almost everyone else was on British Air. We got to the check-in desk and she checked me in and said, “you will have to pick up your bags in Detroit”. Wait, our flight is thru JFK. Originally it was thru Detroit but when a schedule change happened that gave us 15 minutes in Detroit to go thru customs, go thru immigration and passport control, and board our next flight, I called and said, this was an illegal connection. They hemmed and hawed but rebooked us thru JFK. The rebooking happened about 1.5-2 months ago. So, did the TAROM agent have the old information or did she have a premonition. She told us we had to get the other boarding passes in AMS at the transit area. I’ve done this before so that didn’t worry me. We boarded the flight and headed to AMS. IT was a really bumpy flight and we rested some.

Upon arrival in AMS, we headed to the kiosk to get our next boarding passes. It wouldn’t give them to us, so we were heading to the transfer desk when we saw flight from AMS to JFK at our time “Cancelled”. What?? We get to the transfer desk and they said get in line. There was a thing that said, “sky priority” and I got that number, but they didn’t call numbers, you just had to wait in line. There were maybe 25 people ahead of us. It took over 2 and a half hours to get to the front of the line. I turned on my phone – paid the daily $10 to use overseas and called Delta. There was nothing else available into anywhere and they had us both booked on a flight out tomorrow thru ALT into Charlotte. But we still had to stand in the line to talk with the KLM folks to get the hotel and other vouchers… Now one person said the cancellation was for weather, I logged in and checked the weather in both NYC and AMS. There was no weather that was anywhere near bad enough cause a cancellation (I took screen snapshots for documentation). Then another person said it was something to do with lack of pilots... So, why did I want to document this so much. You see if you are traveling in the EU and your flight is more than 4 hours delayed (you get to your destination 4 hours later) and if it starts in the EU and ends up somewhere else, you can put in a claim for 600 euro. Weather may not count so I wanted to show that the weather was OK… I’ll be working on the claims for us when I ever get home. I really feel sorry for the people at the end of the line. I can’t imagine how long it took them.

We went down and waited for the shuttle, and waited, and then took it to the hotel. They wouldn’t take my IHG number “the airline is paying for it” … so, no upgraded room. We then rested for a bit as both of us were tired from last night. After a short rest we decided to make the best of it and took the train into downtown. We had to walk about 15 minutes or so to the train station to catch the train in. On the way, 2 different sets of folks asked us for help. The first couple, I would guess, were from Israel. They wanted to go to central Amsterdam. We told them that is where we were going but they wanted to take a bus. We couldn’t help them. Then at the train station a couple from (maybe Scandinavian) asked us where the hotels were. I told them all the hotels I had seen around our place and they seemed happy and wondered off. Do we look that European??? We got our ticket but just missed the first train by about 2 minutes, so we had to wait 20 minutes for the next one.

The train had a couple stops, then arrived at Central Station. We departed and headed along one of the canals. We did want to do some shopping. Why? Well, I wanted something to wear tomorrow a shirt and some clean underwear. So, while we looked at the sites, we shopped. Oh, a Desigual. I bought 2 tops there and then stopped at H&M for my underwear. Success; Susan had some clothes in her carryon bag and didn’t need to buy anything. We walked around a bit more and took some pictures. I don’t know what was going on in Amsterdam, but it was very crowded “Times Square crowded all over the city”. It sure wasn’t this crowded last time I was there. This was crazy. Dinner was part of our hotel voucher and we knew we needed to get back for it and then get to bed early so we took the train back, but this time we got off at the airport. My knees were telling me not to walk the last 15 minutes from the train station but from the airport we could wait and wait again for the hotel shuttle. While we were waiting for the train, a couple with a small kid wanted to know if this was the train for Brussels. We tried to tell them this was the local train, not the intercity trains. I hope they made it. But again, do we look like we belong here??

Back at the hotel, we got our voucher and headed to the restaurant. Turns out it was a buffet for all us stranded folks. It was ok, not great but not horrible. We headed back up to the room and worked on the blog, took showers and crashed. Hopefully we will make it to the states tomorrow.

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