Leaving Amsterdam

Since our bus to the Amsterdam Airport leaves at 4:45 we awoke around 4 am to prepare for the return trip home.  We had put our bags outside our stateroom door before midnight they could be taken out to the bus by morning.  Since we were still 6 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Savings Time, we were leaving the ship at 10:45 pm on Tuesday back home.  Because of the darkness we were unable to see anything of Amsterdam on the bus to the airport.  It didn’t take long to get to the Delta Airlines check-in and get our boarding passes with the automated kiosk.  We also used the automated bag check fairly easily.  Security was detailed but fairly easy since we were there early and that the airport had plenty of agents.
There was a fairly heavy rain as we waited on the tarmac at the Amsterdam Airport.  That was a bit disconcerting for me since the airport sits more than 3 meters below sea level.  On takeoff the water really sprayed from the runway but the liftoff was smooth and easy.

The flight from Amsterdam was over seven and a half hours but the flight was fairly comfortable.  Although we tried to snooze, I don’t think that any of us really got much sleep.  Mary watched a few episodes of a new Muppets TV show.  I watch The Revenant which stunk and Good Will Hunting which would have been much better without the profanity.  The rest of the time we listened to music on the in-flight entertainment system that is now free on Delta international flights.  We had a breakfast and a snack on the flight both of which were good by the standards of airline food.

We arrived in Detroit on time and had lunch at Popeye’s Chicken (Ian, Emily & I) and Qdoba (Mary).  We used to the free WiFi at the Detroit Airport to check in then caught the short one hour flight back to Lexington, Kentucky.  We picked up the car from long term parking, dropped Emily & Ian off in Georgetown then drove home.  We stopped for gas in Mt. Sterling and made it home by 6 pm.  We had used up most of the perishable food before we left so we made a pizza on the grill for dinner.  We wanted to stay awake until at least 9 pm so we would start getting back on our time schedule.  Both of us would be going in to work the next day.

In reflecting on the trip we all had a great time.  We were so happy that Emily & Ian could join us.  Having them on the trip made everything so much more fun.  We saw a number of attractions that we had seen when we were in Germany in 2010.  However, it was late December then and everything looked so much different this trip.  In addition, we saw so many things that were new to us.  At dinner the night before we had a discussion of the favorite things that we did and saw during our time there.  Each of us had different favorites or different reasons for the favorites but each of us has some great memories.

For me, the best parts of the trip were when we were not on one of the Viking excursions but were just out on our own.  The included trips were very good but we interacted very little with locals other than the guides that were hired to assist us.  While I am certain that having the cruise passengers somewhat isolated would be desirable to most, we would far rather be more unrestrained in our travels.  If we were in a less culturally friendly part of the world we would have a different opinion perhaps but we would be very comfortable travelling through Switzerland, Germany, France or the Netherlands on our own using rail and other public transit.

It was interesting that we visited a number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites:

• Cologne Cathedral – Cologne, Germany
• Upper Middle Rhine Valley – Koblenz, Germany
• Strasbourg Grande Île – Strasbourg, France
• Kinderdijk Windmills – Kinderdijk, Netherlands
• Heidelberg Castle – Heidelberg, Germany (tentative)

The photo album that includes many snapshots from our trip is at - https://goo.gl/photos/oGi16dkTjMBd6kbP8