Nairobi to Amsterdam

 
Sally did very nicely for us, especially because she had never met us before. She had been willing to put us up the entire 2 weeks if we weren't travelling so much.

This morning we woke up at 3:30 for a 4:00 am departure from the house. Sally came with Melicah, but Blacklaw did not come because Poly refused to go pick him up on that road. We had been really afraid of how long it would take to get to the airport after last night's jam. It took 15 minutes just to navigate one km of her road, but after that we just zoomed through town because there was no traffic. They dropped us off, and check-in did not take long at all, so we had 3 hours to kill. We did have to scan our four fingers and thumbs, on both hands.

Our flight was supposed to leave at 8:10 am but in true Kenyan fashion, it didn't leave until 9:30.  We sat at the gate and watched each individual piece of luggage go pole pole (slowly slowly) up the conveyor into the plane.  Then a guy came with a small beagle and walked in and out of the plane and then into the luggage compartment.  Then 2 pieces of luggage were taken out of the plane, thankfully they weren't ours.  After takeoff the captain said the delay was because 4 crew members called in sick today.  Hmmm, wonder if that is true?  We had ALOT of trouble with our seatback systems today.  But at this point we've been on several long flights and seen all the good movies anyways.  We both had aisle seats today, beside each other.  No perfume issues.
 
Immediately after we exited the airport we could tell a difference from Kenya.  Everything was new and modern, but also alot of people were smoking cigarettes or joints, yuck (very few people smoked in Kenya at all).  We caught a shuttle to our hotel very easily, it only took 15 mins.  We are on the bottom of an old canal house, our room is great, so quiet, and we have a personal computer to use in our room, yippee!  Elizabeth our hostess took alot of time to tell us anything we needed to know about Amsterdam and which places to avoid.  We decided to walk to find a restaurant.  Lucky us, today was Pride Day, the canals were FULL of boats of people celebrating, and the rain did not seem to put any damper on their party.  The streets were full of litter and bottles.  We walked along the canals and watched the mayhem for awhile, then found a quiet beautiful French restaurant for dinner.  Back to our rooms for a much needed shower, felt so good!  And imagine - we can drink the tapwater!