Traveling to Africa

July 12- 14, Stopover in Amsterdam

So our flights to Africa happened to be arranged as two red-eyes for the longest legs, which was brilliant.  From Sioux Falls to Chicago, which was a morning flight, I was awake, though bored.  James Rollin’s Sandstorm was my companion book for the first part of the trip and it was a good book, but I always get bored on planes.  Our layover in Chicago was only long enough to have lunch, which was good – the international terminal is pretty boring. 

Our flight to Amsterdam left at 4:00 PM with an arrival in Amsterdam at 6:00 AM the following morning.  I slept through the whole flight, watching the first 20 minutes of Les Miserables at the very end of the journey, though I dozed through that, too.

Smiling on the Canal Boat!  See our Starbucks? 

After we landed in Amsterdam, we found a locker to store our carryon luggage, since our big bags were checked through the Kilimanjaro.  Divested of the weight, we went out to find the canal boat that we had tickets for and found it (eventually), though we had to lollygag since it wasn’t open.  We went for a walk in the nearby streets, found a few headshops, a couple sex shops, and finally a bakery where I got a delicious cranberry scone and Marc got a brownie (not that kind of brownie...).  Breakfast accomplished, we went back to wait for the canal bus, having a fun conversation with a couple Brits as we did so.  We even went and got Starbucks, which was awesome.

Headshop alley - there were five before we found a bakery

The canal ride was delayed and even though we could see the boat we wanted at a nearby dock, the staff kept insisting that was the wrong boat.  We waited about half an hour past the time the boat was supposed to come and then the one that we had been watching earlier finally moved to our pier to pick us up.  It was very silly and there was never any explanation.  Rather than be ugly Americans like some of the passengers were, we just went with the flow.  Heck, we had a long time to waste, so it wasn't that big of a deal.  

We had a beautiful ride to the Van Gogh museum – there are houseboats all along the way and some of them are very beautiful!  I think I would enjoy living in a houseboat - they look quite spacious, clean, and have a great view.  Some of them even had kids waving to us as we passed!

Canal View - gorgeous

Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh

The museum was amazing.  Being that close to some of my favorite paintings was a real treat.  We got Dags a postcard book as a souvenir and showed her drawing of sunflowers to several people who humored me and told me it was good.  We took a picture of the real thing for her to see when we got back.  We walked over the Hard Rock Café for lunch.

Because we had some extra time, we also went to the Rijksmuseum and Marc got to see Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which is a fabulous painting and a whole lot bigger than I thought it would be.  We also saw other Rembrandts and Vermeer's Milkmaid, which was amazing close up.  After touring a few other rooms of arms and armor, ship models, and other paintings, we decided it was probably time to head back.

The Rijksmuseum - amazing collection!

On the way back to the airport, we sat with some Brits again and had a great conversation as we slowly made our way back.  This group was a family and thought our climbing was a fantastic idea for holiday.  At least, the husband did - the wife thought he was nuts.  We thought it was vaguely amusing that all our great conversations of the day had NOT happened with anyone from our own country.

The giant letters outside the Rijks - everyone was posing there

Once back at the airport, we had to find our carryons and then go through security to get back into the terminal.  It wasn’t all that difficult, just time consuming.  We found something to eat (pizza) and then headed for our gate for another night flight to Nairobi.  I slept the entire flight,  waking up long enough to watch the first twenty minutes of Les Mis (again) at the end of the flight.

The Nairobi airport is awful.  It is really old, under construction, and had only one working women’s bathroom which was questionable.  In fact, at one point, there was a man urinating in one of the stalls, which I found funny since he hadn’t bothered to close the door.  We had to go through security at each gate (same as Amsterdam) but once in, there was no access to the bathroom at all, so I had to leave twice before our plan actually landed.  Security thought I was odd.

Our flight into Kilimanjaro was early in the morning and our cruising altitude was 17,000 feet (it was a very small plane).  And low and behold, rising from the clouds in all her glory, was the mountain – taller than we were at 19,341.  She was gorgeous and quite a sight to see first thing in the morning.  Landing was almost anticlimactic!