Our return day went quite smoothly–it was just long! We woke up pretty early although we didn’t have to; in fact, we nearly maxed out our hotel room time and worked on blogs and email after breakfast until after 10:30 (checkout was at 11). Then we took the impossibly steep stairs for the last time, with all of our luggage, and walked along the canals back to the Amsterdam main station, with a nice long break for one more lunch, at a pancake house near one of the main canals, with a beautiful spot by the water and in the shade!
We had pre-purchased our train tickets to Schiphol (a 17-minute ride for 4.90 Euro per person, and 168 trains going that direction each day; so it is beyond my comprehension why people would instead get a taxi and pay more like 40 Euro instead) and got to the airport without any problems. We waited in the main hall for a bit until our flight and gate showed up, made our way through the usual phalanx of security checks, passport checks, boarding card checks, and then sat at the gate for several hours (I also walked some, trying to tire myself out and making sure I got to move my legs some before the long flight. We boarded between 4 and 5 and took off almost on time. We were not able to sit together AND be comfortable because we were squeezed into the last row with a very large gentleman, so I moved 30 rows further up front, and we communicated mostly by text! I watched two movies–the new-ish Steven Spielberg West Side Story and an Alexander Payne movie called The Holdovers, of which I had read or heard some good reviews and interviews when it came out. It was quite good, and I was impressed by the young actor who was one of the two leads (Paul Giamatti was the other). When we landed in Atlanta, I had maybe slept an hour, and been to the bathroom approximately 100 times. The transfer with the passport check went astonishingly fast, and we got to our gate for the Omaha flight with plenty of time to spare. On that flight (seated together) we did sleep some, and at midnight, we landed in Nebraska, and thanks to Mark’s friend James, we were home around 1:30 am in spite of a big rainstorm with lighting a, greeted the cats, unpacked, and were in bed by 3 am Central Time. A great trip, but I am glad we’re home. Time to settle into our fall routine. What a wonderful summer we had.