Over the channel we go

The morning of Thursday, June 13 went by in a fog. We caught the airport bus in the dark just down the street from our Dublin hostel, and arrived at the airport as the sun was coming up.

The gate displays at the Dublin airport really make you wait for it. Most flights don't display their gates until 60 minutes before takeoff. The time of display seems to be about 20 minutes before the flight boards, so I guess for most flights, passengers just line up when they arrive at their gates. Maybe keeps people in the shops longer.

This morning though, in what turned out to be a glitch, as soon as our flight to Eindhoven showed the gate number, it immediately noted that boarding was in the final stages.

Dash down yards of corridor. At 6:30 in the morning. The exercise woke us up.

False alarm. We and 3 dozen other passengers arrived confused and hurried to see the flight before us lined up at the gate. We were still 50 minutes early.

The rest of the morning was a parade of transport that arrived with perfect timing, right in front of us, so that from plane to bus to train to bus, we never waited more than 5 minutes.

The train was much more comfortable than the plane. Because he is so old, Matt was only eligible for a train pass with 1st class access. No bargain ticket for him. What a burden. We sat in a "quiet" cabin, and Devon really like the sliding seat backs. We have a little splitter that lets us both use headphones to listen to one thing, and it's nice to share.

We'd made reservations to stay in the spare bedroom of an apartment in a quiet neighborhood in western Amsterdam. Matt couldn't read the tiny picture of a map section that we got with the listing, so we walked way farther than we needed to.

But everyone in Amsterdam speaks English, it seems, so we asked a nice person, and they whipped out their phone, and we were back on track. Remember, Devon's phone was gone, and Matt's was seemingly crippled (he learned how to enable GPS later, don't worry), but on Thursday, we had only our wits. Good thing we are witty.

Up to the apartment for a quick tour. A modern-ish building and Trista, our host is friendly. On Thursday afternoon, we would have Bern happy with a cot. We nabbed a quick picnic lunch from a grocery store, and sacked out for a bit.

By 4:00, we ready to hit the tourist traps. More on that later.

Here is a photo of Trista's apartment, with a snacking Devon.