After what felt like forever in the air, we finally started our descent into Amsterdam. I always enjoy watching the moving map on the inflight entertainment, especially when you can actually recognise places below.
The overnight flight wasn’t too bad. I actually managed around 8–9 hours sleep, although not before managing to spill an entire glass of ginger ale all over my duvet! Thankfully none of it landed on me or my clothes, so I flipped the duvet over, found a dry corner and went straight back to sleep.
The Cathay Pacific bed still doesn’t beat Singapore Airlines, but it definitely helped make the flight easier.
Landing at Schiphol always feels a little exciting because it’s my first step back into Europe.
Except… Schiphol decided to make us work for it.
At one point everyone was being directed towards an exit that was completely locked. There seemed to be around 75 of us confused travellers standing at the end of the finger wondering what we’d all missed as all doors beyond the finger in both directions where locked, after about 10 mins, someone finally opened the doors. It gave everyone a good laugh once we realised none of us were going crazy. On the other side of the door however we were meet by a group of boarder control, who were checking everyone's passports before we could progress into the terminal.
And even after that we had two other passport e-gates to pass through before we got to our luggage.
Lia and I had a few hours before our KLM flight to Norwich, so we headed outside for some fresh air. After nearly two days inside airports and aircrafts, it felt amazing just to sit outside, breathe properly again and watch the world go by.
We wandered around a little, admired the endless bicycles (welcome to Amsterdam!), had a look through a few shops and found somewhere to grab a snack. By then I was definitely running on autopilot.
Our original plan had been to try and get on an earlier flight, but that had been cancelled, so we settled in for the wait instead.
I was able to check in bag in earlier, and just as well, as getting back through Customs and Security took us close on 2 hours, but eventually we made it through and found our gate. We also discovered that the little KLM Cityhopper aircraft don’t park beside the terminal. Instead we all piled onto buses and headed out across the tarmac. I honestly thought we’d spend longer on the bus than we would in the air!
Turns out I wasn’t far wrong.
The flight to Norwich is only about 35 minutes, so before we knew it we were descending again.
Bags arrived surprisingly quickly, we picked up our hire car—a BYD station wagon this time—and finally hit the road.
Forty-six hours after leaving home in Wellington, we rolled into Mum’s driveway around 3pm.
It’s always a strange feeling. One minute you’re halfway around the world, and the next you’re making a cup of tea at Mum's in Norwich like nothing ever happened.
The journey was long, there were a few hiccups along the way, but what good trip doesn't have a story to tell! The UK adventure could finally begin.
No comments:
Post a Comment