So I have arrived. Marco and I are alone, after the guests have all said adieu and gone home.
The first flight was JFK to Dublin. In the morning, Roger, Marco and I checked out of the New Yorker hotel around 10am (which pretty much meant just dropping off our room keys in the key drop near the elevator). Then we went and had a late breakfast at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, a 1950s retro themed restaurant where the waitstaff sing at you. I had a Brooklyn bagel, which was a bagel with scrambled eggs and American cheese on top. The singing was fine – it was mainly the waitstaff walking around with a microphone singing.
Eventually we made it back down to the New Yorker hotel and grabbed our bags from storage, and then made our way on the Long Island Railroad to Jamaica station. Once there, we transferred to the air train which would take us to JFK. At least it was much more spacious than the air train that connects the NJTransit stop to Newark airport, the airport we usually use.
I didn’t have any issues at all dropping off my luggage at the Aer Lingus desk, and the lady also helpfully printed our boarding passes for the next flight (Dublin to Amsterdam) as that had not been an option on the website. Security was annoying (when isn’t it?) but nothing that we haven’t seen before. We then waited around a bit for our flight to take off.
On the flight over, Roger and Marco managed to get some sleep (a bit – not great) but I mostly just dozed. Roger and I used the inflight entertainment option to listen to some music. The options were okay but not great, but admittedly I need to listen to more music. It also took forever to get from page 1 to page 24, for instance. But it was good otherwise.
We then arrived at the Dublin airport just after 5AM, as planned. We ended up sitting up on the 4th floor somewhere outside of the Burger King, where we camped out waiting for them to tell us what our gate was. And waited. And waited. The gate opened at 8:40AM and the gate number flashed up on the screen just after 8:30. Crazy.
We also had a delay with the flight, boarding at 9:25AM for our 9:30 flight. I started to doze off more heavily here, although I was jerked awake by the announcements at times. But we still only arrived 5 minutes late, although taxiing from the remote stretch of land that is the outskirts of Schiphol airport took at least 10 minutes. No joke.
Getting through passport control was a breeze. The worker asked what my purpose was for coming to the Netherlands, and I said to move. I then told him to look in the back for my MVV sticker, which he stamped and said I was good to go. So very anti-climatic…
After that we grabbed our luggage and made our way to the arrivals hall, where Marco’s mom was waiting to greet us. After exchanging some hugs and pleasantries we then made our way to the train which we took home to the Hague. Marco’s dad and his wife were waiting in his apartment. We chatted for a while, sharing banketstaaf (“bread” with almond paste in the middle).
After the house guests were gone, Marco and I napped for a while in our new bed (very firm!). Sleep is good – we definitely have our priorities straight!
