This day starts in 2019, but drags on into 2020, so I date it as 1/1/2020. We arrive at KCI at 11:30am on the 31st, a few hours early for our flight, so mom and I grab a snack and some beers to start the trip. We make it to Minneapolis and quickly hop on our flight to Amsterdam. This was a long flight in the middle seats of the middle section, but we made it just fine.
Ok, well, almost fine I guess. I had a pretty bad migraine coming off the plane (this was my first trans-continental flight without sleep) and took a bit to rest my eyes to ward off the puking feeling. I got better though, and we took a stroll through the airport. It’s pretty nice, however going in the city would’ve been much more fun. I guess though at 6am with a noon flight in January, it was quite cold in the Netherlands and insanely foggy. Not to mention dark till 8:30am. Exploring the airport was a fine alternative.
We finally boarded the next flight, but not before meeting a family from Kansas City who was on our first flight. Turns out we’re making the same trip! Their oldest son is teaching English in Spain, so the rest of the family is making the trip to see him and explore the area.
After our 3h flight halfway across the continent, we finally got out of our last plane and began our hunt for the bus. It was a bumpy ride, but we made it to the city center, meeting a young couple from the UP (upper Michigan peninsula for my non-northerners). They were real rookies, but they got to their bus station just fine (where we saw a FlixBus đ).
After making it to the city center, we walked ~20min to our Airbnb where we had a to wait a while for the hosts to come and let us in. It was a quick initiation, but that was alright with us because we were trying to get to Mass at 18:30. The Mass was really nice, although the seating section was quite small. The choral section was directly in the middle of the church, I was confused how chairs behind would be able to participate well.
After church we searched around a while for a place that had tapas indoors. Not much is indoors in this city, probably very nice for months other than January. Oh well, it’s not really that bad. Probably low 50s at night. We found a little place that had crepes and tapas- who knows the authenticity of such a place but we were hungry and just needed a place to sit and eat. We ordered house wine with a cheese plate, hummus, and ceviche. YUM. I’m a big sucker for salmon ceviche. The rest was fine.
By this point it’s 9pm-ish and we’re cold and tired so we headed back home. I had a veryyy nice and warm shower and a restful sleep (besides us both waking up at 2am).
2025-02-08