On to Edinburgh

Tuesday, October 18^, 2016

Early this morning, we arrived at the Amsterdam airport and taxied around for about 45 minutes before we finally pulled into the gate. It was a cold, drizzly morning when we first arrived, but we got to see the sun peek out from behind the clouds as we sat and enjoyed some coffee in the airport. Coffee was just perfect after a nine hour plane ride. It was fun overlooking part of the airport and seeing the busyness of it all. We were also amused by the massive clock hanging in the airport, which displays a fake silhouette of a man drawing, erasing, and redrawing the hands of the clock every minute.

The Amsterdam airport is awesomely huge, but also crazily busy at all times. We felt like fish swimming upstream as we hauled our luggage around and tried to weave in between the masses of people, all while trying not to get run over by the transport carts (think oversized golf carts) speeding through the airport. I think one of my favorite things about the Amsterdam airport is the long moving walkways that remind you to “Mind your step!” It forgot to remind me when I was about to get off, so I almost tripped.

Unfortunately, the combination of sitting for nine hours on the plane and having our meals at odd times made us both start to feel sick while we were in the airport. So instead of continuing to walk around and enjoy how neat the airport is, we ended up sitting and staring at an ugly puce colored wall for a while.

When it was time to leave, we hopped onto a bus that brought us to our plane- a small one with very cramped seats. I’m glad that it was only a one and a half hour flight, considering how small it was.

After the flight, we waited through a line for customs. The man at the desk was our first introduction to the famous Scottish accent. It was great!

We had to ask for help on which tram to get on, but did finally manage to find our way to the Princess Street stop. It was fairly close to where we would be staying for the night, but seemed a lot longer with all the luggage we were carrying, so we decided to take a break and have some coffee along the way. My Mom went downstairs to order some coffee from a really neat place called Wellington Coffee, and we sat outside enjoying our coffee and taking in our first sights of Edinburgh.

After checking out our cute little snug and dropping off our luggage, we bundled up and took a nice long walk through the streets of Edinburgh, and even got to tour a beautiful cathedral. It was pretty cold by the time we started walking back to find a place for supper, so we decided to just pop into a small café to get something warm to eat. After supper, we walked back to the snug and settled in for the night.