November 20-27, Now in UK.

[Izord]

Good trip overall, a couple of glitches. For your departing flight plan on arriving at the airport at least 3 hours early! Lots of long cues. I got to the airport at 1235 and my flight was supposed to depart at 1435. No problemmo , I thought.

So ended up missing my flight, but scheduled one for the next morning at 9:30am, and headed back to the dam for another walk-about.

And I really walked. First visited the GHE for white widdow from the volcano. Then started walking. It was cool, and I had left my heavier clothes locked up in the airport with my bag.

Around midnight, after dealing with bikes, trains, weird traffic signals, and alien streets, I admitted I was quite lost and took a cab to the airport. 35 Euros from whereever the heck I was at the time.

Made it back to the airport. Had some juice and food. Luckily there are several 24-hour bars and restaurants open in the airport. Then I found my departure gate and settled down about 6:30am. I was just sitting there chilling with my bags and noticed two very large cops walking at me. One walked on and the other asked to see my ID and ticket. OK. Then he asked how long I had been in Amsterdam, and he wanted to know why I had changed my flight. It was kind of weird. I had a small plastic shopping bag with some souvenirs in it, and he asked if he could look in there. He saw a Che-Guevarra T-shirt I had in there, then he saw a small red box that had been gift-wrapped, (porcelain doll) and he started poking at the wrapping, I told him it was a doll. Then he asked me if he could look in my travel bag, I said go ahead and he started to unzip it. It was packed full, and it was kind of damp because of all the rain we'd been having.

I offered to open it for him, then he asked my if I had any cigarettes. I said yes and he said how many? Bizarre. I told him a pack and half and they were American. He didn't really look into my bag, He just kind of opened the zipper about 6 inches and my stuff started falling out, not that I had anything to be concerned about in there anyway. Are cigarettes contraband? Last time I checked I had the right to carry cigarettes.

I kept my cool, and he lost interest and walked away, Whole thing took about 2 or 3 minutes. WTF? Was that some kind of shakedown? I think I look pretty normal. I could have had all kinds of shit in my bags, but he didn't really look. I had already gone through the flouro-scan and metal detector.

So I'm at a loss about what that was about. The terminal was pretty empty at that time, but they didn't "shake down" anyone else.

Weird, I went back to sleep, Got on my flight, which was delayed because of KLM's fault, got late to England, got a ticket agent in Bristow to call KLM and they agreed to hotel and transportation. They bought my a cab ride to Birmingham England, and put me up in the Hilton.

So here I am now waiting for tomorrow. Kind of miss home.

I didn't give any updates, and I'll post more later, because my laptop died on Friday, Walking in the rain. It was in it's case, and it decided to start working again today.

So short wrap up: 4 nights in the Swissotel, 2 nights at the Greenhouse effect hotel, Outerspace room, Tiny, but available on Friday.

Overall good trip, KLM is not the most organized. And what's up with that cop thing? Should I blow it off?

Izord

[mazdog]

Sounds like a pain in the ass...but hey you got several more hours in the dam.

Cop thing sound like a shakedown to me....and when they saw you weren't freakin out they figured you were cool. I'm sure they are well trained to just watch how people react to certain questions.

[Boner]

Thats quite mad, one trip we arrived at the airport with a good 2 hours to go before our flight and we noticed it wasn't showing up on the board, when we asked at the desk the flight had been cancelled (we didn't have the so called email telling us either) anyway we had to wait to see if there was any seats available on the next flight that was due to leave in about 30 mins and as soon as there was confirmation we had to literally run from one side of Schiphol to the other which we did and we somehow made it just in time for the supposed boarding and guess what happened? the flight was delayed for about half an hour.

[Valo]

I have flown EasyJet on all 5 trip to Amsterdam without any hiccups at all - despite all their negative publicity. Going with FlyThomson in January as EJ don't fly from Bournemouth; roughly the same price but without the added petrol and car parking money for the airport...just hope the flight itself goes as smoothly as my previous ones.

I was in the Outerspace room in September - it was small but had a tv, fridge and was in a perfect location which suited me down to the bone. [Will actually start posting my report today!!]