It was a real struggle last night in the airport, I don't recommend long layovers at all, but anything else was WAY more expensive flight price wise. I wandered around now and then and tinkered online for a short while here and there. I am pretty much running on fumes and lower than empty. I am going to have a good sleep tonight, I hope anyway. They started boarding the flight (well I thought anyway) lekker early about 1.5hr before take off. Turned out they weren't really boarding but more doing a pre checkin and then everyone was in another area and were called by zones to board closer to the time.
Flight from Dubai to Amsterdam was pretty good. The plane was one of the big A380-800's is the 2nd time I've been on one of those (other time was back from Paris CDG-CPT in 2010). There is just so much room and facilities are exceptional, makes travelling in Economy perfectly OK. The flight was pretty full but luckily there was an empty seat next to me so that was sweet. The flight was long as expected. I watched Robocop to pass some time, was OK. The seats had power adapters but didn't bother getting my laptop out as I can just survive with what I had left, I should have I suppose, but meant getting it out of the overhead lockers etc. I did charge my Phone with the USB socket tho.
No chance was I going to accept the question and say I trusted the device that was connecting to it.
Obligatory food pics ... my choice (of the main meal) was:
Continental Breakfast:
Fruit: Fresh seasonal fruit
Main Course: Deli platter which includes thinly sliced beef pastrami, grilled chicken breast, gouda cheese, marinated potato salad and fresh crudités
Dessert: Croissant served with butter and preserve
Lunch:
Appetiser: Prawn salad: sweet and chilli marinated prawn, accompanied by pasta salad and black olive (I didn't eat that, noone else did either from what I could see when they were collecting the trays)
Main Course: Lamb machbous, lamb marinated in aromatic spices and slow cooked with rice, garnished with fried onions and pine nuts
Dessert: Chocolate and walnut brownie, rich chocolate brownie, accompanied by coffee cream, topped with chocolate flakes
The full menu for the DXB-AMS flight is here for those interested.
Looking out into the clouds on the way from Dubai to Amsterdam. The windows of the A380-800 are massive.
When we landed there we had a “pace car” that lead us into the area we needed to go to, weird. Dunno why, but quite strange, never seen that before.
Got into Schipol on time, then was passport control. The guy quizzed me as to when I got my UK/EU passport and where from etc. He then proceeded to look it over with a magnifying glass in great detail. He then sat back and thought to himself for about 5 seconds, then just gave it back to me and said OK go through. I know I don't have one of the new type ones with the chip etc. but it is still a 100% valid passport. I crapped myself for a few seconds there and didn't know if I would allowed in, hope I don't have more issues like that anywhere. My passport needs renewing early/mid 2015 so will then get that all sorted out.
Collected my bag fine, connected online with the Free Wifi that they offer at Schipol Airport so that was cool to just let people know I was in Europe safely. Bought my train ticket to Groningen (E25) from the machine next to the baggage claim as was quieter there than upstairs (so I found out, so was a good choice). Used my Standard Bank Travel Wallet which worked fine for the transaction. I went with that in the end vs the BidVest Euro card. Much the same thing really.
Wandered out the front of Schipol and took a few pics of the airport sign and then headed back inside, the wrong way 1st, and then went down to the trains. Waited a few minutes and then the train came, the 14:33 one had 1 connection so took the train to Zwolle and then changed trains to the one headed to Groningen. All very easy to figure out. The one at 15:03 was a direct train (still with stops, but no changes) but I thought I'd rather get on the move and get to my destination.
Saw some cool big wind turbines one the way, I know they use them quite a lot over here, was nice to see them. I'm sure I looked a bit silly to other passengers in the train, taking my pics, but hey, is my holiday and wanna take as much stuff as possible.
There is free WiFi on the train which is cool, chatted to a few people here and there and typed up this blog entry, until my battery eventually ran flat. The WiFi signal (or speed rather) was better on the 1st train than on the 2nd one, I didn't do any speed tests but it was workable to sync my RSS feeds and do what I needed to do.
Got to Groningen and found my way to my accommodation. Will write a dedicated post about the town and my sightseeing around the place here.
I'm totally wrecked now. I haven't had more than maybe 15min sleep in the past day and a half and I'm running at about 40hrs without sleep now, I dunno if you gain more with the timezones or anything. Shrug. Needless to say I am totally knackered and will hopefully sleep well tonight. Will see my alarm tomorrow as want to get moving earlyish to scope out the MotoGP setup and get my tickets and get a good spot to sit etc.