We made it! We left
on a Sunday and arrived on Monday. It
was a quick eight hour flight to Amsterdam and, after a short layover (AKA
coffee break), we had a two and half hour trip into Ki3v. Brent has never been to Europe so watching him discover all the
cool stuff they have on trans-Atlantic flights was pretty fun. Free movies!
Free food! FREE BEER!!! =) For
those of you who don’t know him, Brent is six and half feet tall and 200+
pounds, so sitting in a tiny airplane seat for that long is difficult for
him. He did have the forethought to
upgrade our seats to economy comfort which, though not first class by any
means, did give us lots of extra room on all four sides and made the trip much
more bearable.
I get extremely fussy when either hungry or tired (and Lord
help you if I’m both). I am a bedtime
snob meaning it has to be just the right amount of recline/dark/noise or I
can’t sleep. I also get air/carsick so
you can imagine what a hoot I am to travel with especially for long periods of
time that span both meal and bed times.
I was prepared however! I started
our flight with a healthy dose of Dramamine and combatted the hangry/nauseous
by eating something every single hour of the flight. That included not only the meals and snacks
they gave us on the plane but also multiple sticks of dry sausage and an entire
bag of Riesens. Which is approximately
36 more Riesens than any one person should ever eat in one sitting. I passed the time in between meals by
obsessively chewing gum and drinking water like a fish. The perpetual round the clock eating
schedule, however, left little time for sleeping and I think I finally passed
out the last hour and a half of the flight.
My dad was a seasoned traveler in his day, having flown back
and forth to Africa once every other month for number of years. His piece of advice for combating jet lag
was to take quick nap when you arrived, force yourself to wake up and then stay
awake as late as you could. Even if that
meant you ate dinner and went to bed at 7 pm, odds are you’d sleep well that
night, wake up at a mostly normal time the next morning and look! You’re already on your new schedule. And that is exactly what we did. Our driver picked us up at the airport, took
us to exchange some money and buy a few groceries and then dropped us off at
our apartment. I took a short nap while
Brent watched a movie and, after four phone calls and two trips down the
world’s tiniest elevator, we figured out how to work the front door so we could
get something for dinner.
 |
| Hello, tiny elevator! Brent is literally touching both the door and back wall with his shoulders. It's that small. But a fantastic alternative to walking up seven flights of stairs with three suitcases and a hella heavy backpack.
Our driver had made several suggestions on our way in about which restaurants were good/easy to order from so, in keeping with our adventurous, jet-setting ways, we had a fabulous local meal of…hamburgers and French fries. Sorry, people, but I’ve just been on a plane for over 15 hours and have slept for about two minutes. You’re lucky I could move the hamburger from the plate to my mouth. Adventurous was just not in the cards last night. At least we didn’t go to McDonald’s...
|
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| Brent caught me mid-chew. My cheeks aren't really that fat. |
After dinner we came home and attempted to watch a
movie. Brent woke me up half way through
it and suggested that maybe it was time for bed. We both got a decent night’s sleep (Brent
never sleeps well no matter where he is) and woke up feeling good and ready to
go this morning. So thank you,
Daddy. I promise I really was listening
all those times you tried to tell me stuff, even if it didn’t look like
it.
Our apartment in Ki3v is really pretty nice with a full kitchen and
wifi. Brent even mostly fits in the
bed. It did take us about 12 hours and
four more phone calls to figure out the wifi works better if you plug it in…jet
lag, people. Jet lag.
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