We Finally Made It

It turns out I was too excited to sleep anymore on our flight. We exited the plane around 8:30 am and made our way through the airport. We spent two minutes looking for an airline lounge to grab a bite of food and wash up a bit for our day. The lounge we found was not the right one, so we decided to just make our way to customs. The customs guy was the most chill customs agent I have ever met. He asked me how long I was going to be in Europe and then proceeded to ask me if I was going to go out and party for Queens Day in Amsterdam. He said it was a great time and I should definitely do it. Only in Amsterdam does the customs agent suggest partying to arriving tourists.

Our next stop was the baggage claim. The baggage from a our flight took a long time to get rolling but thankfully when it did, our bags arrived! Next we went to locate the Hertz counter. We found it and there was quite a long line. There was a sign for Number One Club Gold members that said they could proceed outside to the car kiosk. That’s me, so I decided to give it a try. We went to the parking garage, found the kiosk and unfortunately that had a long line too. I decided to just wait this time. Twenty minutes later a guy finally started helping me. After pulling up my reservation he asked, “Have you already checked in?” I said, “No you are the first Hertz agent to help me.” He looked confused, banged around on the keyboard again, and declared I would have to go back inside to be helped. His name tag said he was the manager and he was dressed in a suit. I wasn’t sure what the non-managers inside would be able to do that he couldn’t outside but I didn’t have much of a choice. Then one of the other guys said he could help me, so he took over for “Marco” and started banging away on the computer. I confirmed with this guy that my car needed to be an automatic and that it had to have GPS. He then said he could do that but I would have to get a large body Mercedes that would cost me a 1,000 more Euros for the two days I would have the car. I laughed, said, “Uhm no thanks, you can look here at my PREPAID reservation. You are on the hook for sending me away with an automatic vehicle.” He looked at the sheet, was like, “Ok. You’ll have to go inside.” Now 45 minutes into this Hertz adventure I headed back inside to another long line. I eventually made it to the front of the line where a nice woman was waiting. Marco was now working the position next to her, so I said, “Marco sent me back inside, I don’t really know why other than I evidently couldn’t be helped outside.” They then started conversing in Dutch. She then went through a stack of contracts from earlier in the day and pulled one out. She showed it to Marco and said “but her first name is Kathryn, not Deborah.” From what I gather both Marco and the other guy who tried to help me outside thought I had already checked a car out because a woman named Deborah Polanwsky (no joke it had the ‘w’) had already rented one this morning. The woman, the only one with a brain, then located my correct reservation in the system and had me on my way within 4 minutes. She warned me that my car was “very big” and hoped that would be okay. I was excited to see what this actually meant when I got outside. My “Espace”, no joke, that’s the name of the car was like a hybrid SUV and minivan. It didn’t have a key but rather a card that was inserted before pressing an on and off button. It also had no place to put any luggage. We had to fold down seats and load our stuff on top of them. This wasn’t ideal because our car would be parked with exposed luggage but at this point, there was NO WAY I was going back inside. Two hours after landing at Schipol mom and I were finally on our way to Keukenhof.

Keukenhof is a ginormous flower garden located just outside of Amsterdam in a town called Lisse. It is definitely the type of place that is best seen as opposed to described. It is also the type of place primarily inhabited by people with gray hair. Clearly this was an activity chosen by mom. I did, however, enjoy seeing it. Some fun facts about Keukenhof:

The name Keukenhof originated in the 15th century, when the land belonged to Countess Jacoba of Bavaria.
The park is situated on 32 hectares.
Each year 7 million bulbs are planted, among which are 600 varieties of tulips.
The bulbs are provided by some 90 “Purveyors of the Royal Household”.
Some 7,500 kg of annual grass seed are is sown each year.
In total, 15 kilometers of foot paths run through the park.
There are 280 benches, 15 fountains, and 32 bridges in the park. (I counted, no I didn’t, I read it in a book.)

After spending four hours at Keukenhof we were off to our next destination. I wanted to stop and see the North Sea coast line, so we set off for Katwijk. It was only 20ish miles away, so it didn’t take long to get there. Katwijk felt like a much more developed, with older architecture, Oregon coast to me. Actually that’s not really true. What felt similar was that it smelled like ocean, and it was breezy and cold. It was however, beautiful and I got to touch the North Sea which is silly but made me happy.

It’s now approaching 4:30 pm and we still have a bit of a drive ahead of us tonight. We are sleeping in Brussels which is supposed to be a two and half or three hour drive from here. Traffic makes me think it will be longer... I’ll let you know.

Traffic around Rotterdam was terrible. It took us forever to get through an “incident ahead” as our GPS kept telling us. Once we got passed Rotterdam things picked up and we proceeded to Antwerp for dinner. One thing that surprised me on the way was that going from country to country, or at least the Netherlands to Belgium is just like driving from state to state in States. There was no border crossing, customs or anything. Just a sign that said “Welcome to Belgium”.

In Antwerp we ate in what seemed to be a Friday night hot spot. I think we were in a bit of the suburbs near a movie complex and some other entertainment, like billiards, etc. The restaurant we ate in seemed sort of trendy and showed the “Fashion Network” on a real. The majority of the footage talked about how it was the founder of the 
“F TV’s” birthday. There was a rolling ticker talking about how the staffers at the network wanted to wish Michel Adam a happy birthday. I have a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t the staffs’ idea. The images of this “fashion icon” made him seem like a total, uhm... you know the word.

The drive from Antwerp to Brussels was surprisingly quick, only 40 minutes or so. Our Courtyard by Marriott was easy to find. It’s 10 pm now and I can barely keep my eyes open. Mom had the luxury of naps while I was driving... obviously I did not.... to that end... it is now time for bed.

I’ll write again soon!

Katy