Getting the family ready for 3 weeks on the road can be arduous but nothing Karen can't handle in her sleep. So it seemed appropriate to complicate matters by letting her know I was going to be at a work offsite retreat for the three days prior to our leaving and that we were going to take advantage of being out of the house to get the floors refinished. I recommended she get those furniture moving skills back into shape.
Out flight was scheduled to depart at 6:20pm and I was scheduled to speak at the offsite retreat at 2pm. Given I had a 45 minute ride home and hadn't packed added some extra excitement to the process. However everything worked like clockwork and we arrived at the airport without any significant drama.
Getting 5 people over to Europe in the summer can take a healthy bite out of the bank account. Flying into one destination and out of another adds to the planning complications. The financial and logistical considerations mix with my delight in seeing my families bewildered faces when I run down the itinerary of our flight to Amsterdam on TAP Portugal. Don't most people fly through Lisbon to get to Amsterdam ?
My family was incredulous that I did not spring for business class seats on the initial leg but I did score the best seats in economy with bulkhead and exit row seats that provided extra leg room.
Despite the extra legroom nobody really got any significant sleep on the overnight flight from Boston to Lisbon. We had a 2 hour layover in Lisbon that had the additional excitement of Kelsey leaving her passport at security. After another 2 hour flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam - we stumbled, bleary eyed through Schipol looking for our rental car agency.
To me the biggest question of this trip was going to be answered when we determined if we could fit all of our luggage in the rental car. When I asked the lady at the check-in counter if our luggage would fit in the SUV that I had rented - she chuckled. Not a good sign, She advised me that my best option was to spend an extra 200 euro on a Audi A4 wagon. After telling Kelsey that Duke University was now off the table for college -I signed up for the upgrade and headed to the garage.
Our luggage did fit (barely) and we were off for a 2 hour ride across the Netherlands to our Airbnb in Maastricht. 21 hours after we left our house we were all pretty exhausted. 2 cars, 2 buses and 2 planes. We had arrived.
We had just enough energy to take a quick stroll through the city and hit the grocery store down the street for some staples (umm you people don't refrigerate your milk ?!). Jake was the first down at 8:30pm and everybody was out by 10pm. Excited to be rested and ready to start tomorrow.
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