I'm Hoping to Leave, On A Jet Plane

After dinner in Amsterdam, we got back to the hotel room and Carol finished packing.  (Yes, Carol does all the packing because if I packed, I could only take about half the clothes she's able to fit in).  As Clint Eastwood would say, "A man's got to know his limitations."  Not only do I know my limitations, Carol certainly know them!

The terrible confusion and horrible understaffing plaguing Heathrow Airport is also impacting Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.  While our flight wasn't until 8:25 am, we had been advised to get there at 5:30 am -- three hours in advance.  That meant a 5:00 am taxi pick-up, which meant a 4:15 am alarm, which meant we were not getting much sleep that night, on the heels of our transatlantic flight the night before.  

The airport was a zoo.  Long lines, terrible signage.  We spent about ten minutes in the first line we found before Carol overheard someone saying that the line we were in was for international flights outside of Europe.  Thank goodness there were no signs to that effect, or we might have known where to go.

We wandered down the huge airport lobby teeming with people before someone directed us where to go.  Again, the concept of signs seems to have eluded the Dutch authorities in charge of the airport.  Carol finally got to a machine to print our boarding passes.  Since we weren't checking luggage (very smart decision by Carol -- doing laundry several times during the trip is a small price to pay to actually NOT lose our luggage).

The chaos depicted at some European airports is real.  Plan accordingly.

The good news (well, besides that we easily made the flight) is that the security line, although quite long, moved rapidly.  The length of the line made us appreciate TSA pre-check and Clear, but the speed of the line made up for it.

They made us gate check our luggage, but that was a relatively simple process.

However, the combination of a lack of sleep (when already sleep-deprived) and lack of food options pre-flight turned problematic in the heat of Milan.  Yes, dear readers, this is called foreshadowing.