Denver to Amsterdam

Today I once again am venturing across the pond for a work retreat. This time, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I’ll get there mid-day Saturday and I’ll spend the afternoon and all of Sunday sightseeing before meeting up with coworkers on Monday for a week of in-person work!

My dad kindly took me to the airport this morning. Security was pretty crowded, but I have TSA precheck which makes it so I don’t have to take everything out of my bag and take off my shoes. I got to the airport in plenty of time, and I had brunch at Panda Express before heading over to my gate.

The boarding process on the flight to Toronto was pretty slow. The line management was horrible; they had queues set up for each of the zones, but then just ignored them and used a single queue. They were also checking everyone’s carry-on bag size as they scanned tickets. They needed to do that, though because there were definitely people bringing bags that were way too large onto the plane.

I managed to take a short nap and then worked on this blog post and cleaned up my inbox. I knew that I would be flying approximately over Waterloo which is where a couple of my coworkers live, so as we were approaching Toronto, I was looking out the window to see if I could see it. We were approaching a small city and I took some pictures, thinking it might be Waterloo. The live map wasn’t working, but I was able to manually pan around the disfunctional map and match up the terrain. I had actually taken a picture of Waterloo! I sent the picture to my coworkers once we landed in Toronto and one of them said that they could see their house in the picture I’d taken!

My layover in Toronto was quite long: almost six hours. Luckily, my Venture X card gives access to Plaza Premium lounges and there was one in the terminal that I was in, so I spent my layover in relative comfort.

On the second leg of my journey, I was super lucky because there wasn’t anyone in the middle seat on my row. I managed to get got a couple good hours of sleep on the plane.

After arriving at the airport, I bought a SIM card for data and then got a bus to my hotel. I’m staying at De Bedstee Capsule Hotel. It was one of the cheaper options close to the city. It’s literally right across the street from the Van Gogh museum. I dropped my bags off and then walked to lunch. I went to a restaurant called Small Talk and had a really fantastic steak. Then I headed back to the hotel to wait for when I could check in. I tried to work on my blog a bit, but ended up having an accidental nap in the lobby.

Once I got checked in to the hotel, I tried to stay awake for a few hours before I fell asleep for good around 18:30. I slept for a long time (it was very easy to do so because the capsule is so dark inside) and only woke up at 07:00 the next morning, but that’s a story for the next post!