Bryan to Rotterdam — August 26-August 27, 2026

This trip seemed like it was a long time coming, even though it wasn’t as long a wait as it might have been if the A&M Football schedule hadn’t intervened and thrown a wrench in our plans.

On our last day on the Nieuw Statendam last August Jim wheeled me down to the future cruise desk and we booked a 4 week cruise on the same ship — to north of the Arctic Circle followed by Spain and Portugal, I was a little hesitant about the lack of daylight we’d have in November, but I thought it would be good for chances to see the Northern Lights so we booked it. I also realized we’d never been away for that long — heck, we hadn’t even made it through a two week cruise, but staying longer given the current price of international air travel seemed like a smart approach, so we decided to give it a shot!

A couple months later, while I was still recuperating from my ankle surgery the 2026 football schedule came out. There were three games we wanted to attend in November, and we knew the games in September would be beyond hot, so we switched the cruise to the Rotterdam in September — 2 weeks to Norway and the Arctic Circle and then 2 weeks in the Baltics. As a bonus, friends we met on a cruise 10 years ago were on the first leg the trip, and we thought it would be nice to spend time with them again.

We flew to Amsterdam on August 26 on KLM — we booked early and their pricing was considerably better than United’s. The flight was fine — nothing memorable but nothing really wrong either. We just couldn’t get comfortable and neither of us slept at all on the way over.

Much to our surprise, we were through passport control and had our bags only 15 minutes after we got off the plane!😳 We were so unexpectedly early that our ride service had to reassign our driver. It was the exact opposite of last year’s multi-hour fiasco! We found out one reason it was so fast was Schiphol had suspended the use of the EES Kiosks through September 1 to improve wait times, but now that the machines are in use again the waits are back at 2 hours! Just my opinion, but that is NOT an effective use of technology!

We stayed at the Rotterdam Marriott in a Junior Suite. It was a very nice hotel with a spacious room, a fantastic M Club with a great coffee machine, and a terrible shower. I liked the location right across from Centraal Station and we were able to walk or take the tram to get around town easily.

We didn’t do much the first day. We walked around and did a little toiletry shopping (I had decided to buy full bottles abroad instead of trying to take enough for over a month), and grabbed lunch in the hotel. By the time we finished lunch our room was ready, and we thankfully went up and collapsed for a while.

We walked a little way from the hotel for a great dinner at Bertman’s then went back to the hotel to attempt to get some sleep knowing we’d be awake way too early.