{"id":661,"date":"2006-07-04T23:24:09","date_gmt":"2006-07-05T06:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chasethelight.com\/?p=661"},"modified":"2006-07-04T23:24:09","modified_gmt":"2006-07-05T06:24:09","slug":"amsterdone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/amsterdone\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amazing Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"javascript:void(0)\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/www.chasethelight.com\/images\/070306b.jpg','','width=1200,height=800')\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chasethelight.com\/images\/070306b_th.jpg\" class=alignleft WIDTH=700 border=\"1\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both; padding-bottom: 0.25em;\"><\/div>\n<p>Man, the last two days have been like an episode of The Amazing Race. I thought this morning was going to be a breeze getting to the airport. The airport is supposed to be 15 minutes away by train. Flight&#8217;s at 9:55, but Jill thought it was 9:30. Not sure where she&#8217;s getting these numbers but I&#8217;m glad she&#8217;s been wrong on the last two. So we get on he tram to get to Central Station and it takes a little while. It&#8217;s 8:30 and we still have to catch a train. So we ditch the train idea and just hop in a cab. The cabbie starts driving around the perimeter road of Amsterdam before getting on the highway that is GRIDLOCKED! ARGH!! Our flight LEAVES in 40 minutes and we&#8217;re no where near the airport! Ugh, I&#8217;m tired. So as we&#8217;re sitting in the traffic the guy fesses up and says, &#8220;Normally I work the night shift so I had no idea it gets so backed up.&#8221; Oh jeez, why, why why???! Ha ha ha, new problem, we&#8217;re sooo not going to make the flight. Maybe with the 2 hour layover in London we can catch a later flight.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately the traffic finally breaks free and the cabbie&#8217;s hauling ass now and we actually get to the airport with a short amount of time. Then bonehead cabbie drops us off at British &#8220;Midland&#8221; Airways and not British Airways. We&#8217;re doing the whole OJ Simpson thing through the airport and finally get to BA and we&#8217;re able to express check-in AND the flight isn&#8217;t until 9:55! OMG THANK YOU!! Something in our favor. We still have to get through customs and all the security but we have enough time to quickly grab a bite to eat and then get to the gate. Didn&#8217;t have time to change the Euro money though. Whew, sitting on he plane and on our way to London.<\/p>\n<p>Landed in London and the nightmare of Heathrow has begun. We land and our terminal is 4 but we have to go to terminal 1 to fly to LAX. Heathrow is the size of a big country and has security and customs lines every 20 feet. Anyway, almost an hour later we get to the other side of the country of Heathrow. I have a few minutes so I cash in my Euros for Pounds and buy a huge bag of candy to get rid of the last of my money. Onto the plane we&#8217;re three rows from the back of the plane and I watch &#8220;8 Below&#8221; &#038; &#8220;The Shaggy Dog&#8221; on the way home. Uneventful flight home.<\/p>\n<p>After going through customs and baggage claim we catch a cab back to work to pick up our cars. On the way there it smelled so good out as everyone was having bar-b-ques for the 4th of July. What an exhausting final two days. And that was the European Tour 2006. Must sleep now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Man, the last two days have been like an episode of The Amazing Race. I thought this morning was going to be a breeze getting to the airport. The airport is supposed to be 15 minutes away by train. Flight&#8217;s at 9:55, but Jill thought it was 9:30. Not sure where she&#8217;s getting these numbers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,25,16,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amsterdam","category-europe","category-photography","category-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1MOCs-aF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chasethelight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}