Stopover in Amsterdam 2018

I am leaving for my last grandchild trip. She's the youngest of my 11 grandchildren. She is 12.5

May 29 KLM-Delta Flight to Amsterdam leaving Houston-Bush 1505. Arriving Amsterdam 7:20 May 30

Hotel in Amsterdam: Ibis Amsterdam Centre
Address: Stationsplein 49, 1012 AB
Telephone number: +31 20 721 9172

We have breakfast at the hotel included. I have a scooter to be delivered to the hotel. The lady who has arranged the Amsterdam part of the trip is Desiree van Es with Sage Traveling Tel: 1-888-645-7920 Ext 1 and she actually lives in Houston. She has arranged for us be picked up at the airport, to have a canal boat tour, a walking tour of Amsterdam (well my granddaughter will walk) and we will drive out to Volendam and some outlying villages on the last day (June 1st). Then we will go back to the airport

June 2nd, We leave Amsterdam for a flight to Kilimanjaro airport Dep: 10:25 am Arr: 1950

May 30 - Frustrating First Day​

View from the hotel room window

We had the choice of connecting to the flight for Tanzania by going through London or Amsterdam. I decided to go through Amsterdam and to spend a couple of days there to get over jet lag. On the 30th after the flight I posted...

We are HERE in spite of everything​

First the plane had no idea of my granddaughter's peanut allergy. They handed me a little container of nuts and I told them about it and that was the first they had heard. Even though I called three times to confirm.

Second - the canal cruise man said to tell on the day that we wanted the cruise and not the day before like Desiree said. To call the day before, we would have had to call from Houston.

Third good old Desiree gave us a photo of the place we were to meet the driver and it was totally the wrong place.

Meeting Place a la Desiree

Fourth - the driver could not figure out how to get to the hotel. We finally got here after a series of illegal U-turns

Fifth-the hotel reservation was under Ann (my middle name). So when the scooter was delivered, they didn't have a reservation for Beasley and they sent it back

Sixth we could not get into our rooms until 2:00 - so we've been hanging around here since 10:30. [The hotel later said that at the time I made the reservation I could have asked for the room to be ready early and they would do that.]

They did deliver the scooter today and the hotel lent me a wheelchair until then. The scooter is HUGE and the hall is too narrow for me to get into the room easily. It is also very rabbity. The hotel people are pretty nice.
-
Back to the Play-by-Play of the day

I tried to take photos of the sunrise - I could only see it out of the window past where my feet were and sort of sideways.


Sunrise from the plane


Breakfast menu

They gave us breakfast - I had the cinnamon bread pudding

Breakfast on the plane

and my granddaughter had the Egg Strada with mushroom, turkey bacon and Swiss cheese. Just before we landed they brought around the ceramic houses for us to each pick one and my granddaughter also got one that someone else had left behind. I think they had gin in them. I gave mine to my son-in-law.

I thought it was foggy when we came in, but it was just mist on the windows which the internal blinds did not wipe away.
n-in
landing - mist on the window


Schiphol airport

They came and got me in a wheelchair and we went up into the terminal where they put us on a cart. But the cart lady said children could not ride on the cart!!!. But she let my granddaughter ride on it anyway. First we took another lady to her next flight to Glasgow

Then we went through immigration and our passports got stamped. We got our bags - they came through almost first. The wheelchair lady got a luggage cart - one of those where you have to push down on the handle to make it move. My grandsons could do this easily as they were taller and just had to lean on the handle a little. My granddaughter had to use some muscle.

Good old Desiree gave us a photo of the place we were to meet the driver and it was totally the wrong place. The wheelchair lady called and found the right place
The instructions said to go to #2 Arrivals. There was a photo with an arrow. So we went there. But there was, of course, no one there as you can't WAIT there. So the wheelchair lady talked a long time in Dutch on one of our phones, and we had to go all the way back through the airport and down the elevator to the Departures area where we found our driver at the Red Cube meeting area where Bob and I met the guy in April 2016 for the Tulip Cruise.

The driver could not figure out how to get to the hotel. We finally got here after a series of illegal U-turns


ibis hotel from across the canal


tower next to hotel

We would see the hotel in the distance but could not get there in a car. We finally got there and unloaded about 10:30. But when I gave them my name, they did not have a reservation for me because...

The hotel reservation was under Ann (my middle name). So when the scooter was delivered, they didn't have a reservation for Beasley and they sent it back

They gave us a wheelchair and we went up to the breakfast room where I had two rolls and some juice. My granddaughter said she was not hungry and I wasn't really either. Then I used the bathroom. The bathroom is in Room 101 opposite the restaurant. They took our luggage and called to ask for the scooter to be re-delivered. My granddaughter wouldn't sit down - she persisted in dancing around in front of the automatic doors which made them open and close.

we could not get into our rooms until 2:00. I was feeling a bit nauseated by then.

After I got the scooter but before we could go to our room, I called the canal boat people and made a reservation for the 4:00 boat. We also went next door to the Central Station and I changed $40 to euros so we would have some if needed.

Next problem the scooter is a big ass scooter and it barely fits in the elevator.

For the doors to close I have to bump the rear wall. And when we get to our room, there is a door to the hall before we get to the door for the room and the doors are offset. The hall is too narrow to turn the scooter in. It takes inching back and forth until we get the scooter into the room. With the bell man's help I got it turned around and parked by the desk pointing out And we plugged it in. But I can't tell when it is charged. There are no directions with it.


Granddaughter on her bed

So pretty much as soon as my granddaughter sent a text, she lay down and went right to sleep. I waked her up about 3:10 because the directions said it was a 34 minute walk to the canal cruise terminal.

Canal Cruise

It was a little more than that at people walking speed. Plus I had to keep asking directions. We got down to within about 3 blocks of the place on Prinzengracht. It was supposed to be opposite the Hard Rock. And we could NOT find it or even the street it was on. The map did not have enough detail at the end. We spent a good hour and 40 minutes looking for it. At one point I got ahead of my granddaughter and she lost me, so she called me on my phone and I backtracked to where she was.

I saw a Burger King and thought we might eat there (My granddaughter said she was hungry now), but there were 10 or 11 steps up,


Burger King from Pancake House

so we stopped at the Pancake House across the way.

Pancake house menu

She had an English breakfast (two fried eggs, sausage, bacon,toast and beans). She ate the sausage and the yolk of the eggs.

English breakfast

I had a pizza of which I ate one slice.

My pizza

I put the other 3 slices in a takeout box along with her toast and the bacon. I figured when we woke up at 4 am and were hungry, we would have something to eat.

Now to get back to the hotel. I asked a policeman in a van how to get to Central Station which is right next to the hotel and he said "Follow the trolley tracks" Duh Of course. So we did that. Well it wasn't that easy. I didn't want to be on the bike path because my granddaughter was walking, but there were not always cut-outs on the sidewalks. It involved considerable back and forth trying to find a place I could cross streets. It started to rain a little bit before we got back.

If I am not absolutely straight to go into the elevator, the scooter hits a back wheel on the door. My granddaughter managed to get me through the room door but I was too tired to try to turn the scooter around. She wrote in her diary and then went to sleep. It is 1:30 am Amsterdam time here right now. I slept until about 11 and then I got up and had a shower


Hotel bathroom

and ate another slice of pizza. And I'm going to go back to sleep now.