Day 167: Berlin to Amsterdam — Luggage Lost — Meetup with Julia, Nate, Brandi and Ava
We packed up and left our Berlin Airbnb this morning so excited to hit Amsterdam. My sister Julia and her husband Nate had just touched down there sans kids. So had Willa’s NYC friend Ava and her mom Brandi. Woo!
The heatwave in western Europe has been getting more intense, so we were glad to bail from our no-AC Berlin apartment and check into a hotel.
The Berlin airport is interesting, by the way, because each gate has its own baggage check desk and security. So you go to check bags just outside your gate, walk past the desk once your bags are checked to go through your flight’s own security line, and then just sit at your gate right there. Does that make sense? Interesting model.
The kids were pretty good.
Our flight was delayed an hour which caused many on our plane to miss their connections to places like Washington, DC and Tampa. Tampa? There’s a direct Amsterdam to Tampa flight??
We were relieved to just hop off the plane and be done with flying for the day once we landed — but the joy was short lived. Our bags never appeared on the designated belt.
A visit to the KLM service desk confirmed our fear: The bags didn’t make it.
Kind of amazing that we took 42 flights this year before losing our bags.
We walked out empty-handed, with KLM saying they’d text when the bags were found.
Cabbed into the hotel and checked in to the NH Amsterdam City Centre. Julia and Nate had landed that morning at 8 am and just gotten into their room after wandering the city aimlessly in a daze.
It was so great to reunite with them in the lobby! We stepped out with them into our neighborhood for a stroll. Julia said she didn’t sleep one minute on the overnight. Eek.
We saw this amazing dog being groomed by his mom on a stoop:
We found a place to grab a bite called Toos & Roos. The grownups had a beer while the kids ate pancakes.
Brandi and Ave rode their bike (with big front kid bucket/basket) over to meet us and we all enjoyed the sunshine in a relaxed, perhaps mostly jet-lagged, state.
We all walked to a playground the Luces had passed while walking around earlier. There was an in-ground trampoline, lots of climbing and a chance for grownups to chat.
By 6 pm Julia and Nate decided to crash. They would go on to sleep 15 hours straight. Nobody needed an uninterrupted snooze more than those two, who are here from Nashville on their first kid-free vacation since becoming parents.
Meanwhile the rest of us had dinner in the De Pijp neighborhood, finding a table at a cute Italian place called Renato’s Osteria.
I found this dinner a little stressful because James was tired and Willa and Ava were very excited to be together — a combination of factors that made for whining, shrieking, shouting, dropping silverware, etc — all behaviors I can’t handle after 8 pm in a quiet restaurant filled only with adults trying to have a pleasant evening.
By the time we got home it was late and everyone crashed.
Once again, late sunset killing us. This blog is almost impossible to maintain with such late nights. When your kids are up til 10, what can you do except grumpily read two pages of your book and pass out??
Arrrrrg.
But in good news, our friends and family are here to see us and Amsterdam is just as charming as I remember it!
