For people who had three or four (I don’t really remember) cruises booked when the pandemic started it sure took us a long time to get back to travel! We finally took our oft-cancelled 60th Birthdays Hawaii trip (when we were 62 & a half), but didn’t plan anything after that. Instead of traveling we decided it was time for Jim to retire and for us to get out of Houston. The time between our Hawaii cruise and getting back out there consisted mostly of deciding where we wanted to build our retirement home, building, selling, moving, and settling in to a new home/town/lifestyle. We missed the travel, but have no regrets. We love our new home and community and think we’re in the perfect place.

One day in early March we were on a video call with our financial planner and she told us we needed to spend some money! That’s all it took…it was time for us to visit one of our bucket list countries — Iceland. I immediately jumped on the internet and found an Azamara cruise with an itinerary we loved. I might have a completely different story to tell if United hadn’t wanted almost $12,000 in airfare in Economy Plus!😳 I quickly decided that wasn’t happening and we settled on a Holland America cruise with a great itinerary including a stop in Norway, 5 ports in Iceland, the Isle of Lewis and the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and Dover, England. The cruise left from and returned to Rotterdam which also appealed to us since we wanted to go back to Amsterdam.

We didn’t have an incredibly long time to wait. We booked the cruise in March, which is late for us, and I immediately started researching the ports and planning activities. Somewhere along the line I was able to upgrade our plane tickets from Premium Plus to Polaris so we could sleep (we didn’t) and be more comfortable (we weren’t), but I blame United for that since they’re using cramped old 767s for the 10 hour flight.

Looking on the bright side, even though our flight wasn’t stellar the Polaris Lounge at Houston Intercontinental is a huge step up from the regular United Club, and it would have been even more uncomfortable in the back of the plane.

So after 5 quick months of planning we were off to Amsterdam, then Iceland, then Scotland🩷, and we couldn’t wait to get there and get back to traveling!

The food on the plane was OK — not great but not inedible either. Much to my surprise they had great wine selections and I enjoyed a couple glasses of Shafer One Point Five Cabernet with my dinner.

I also enjoyed customizing my ice cream sundae by topping it off with a little Bailey’s!

I never could get comfortable and didn’t sleep or even rest much. It was partly feeling cramped, and partly because the guy in front of me decided it would be a good idea to read with his phone flashlight pointing straight up to the ceiling and reflecting down into my pod. I finally gave up and amused myself by watching the sun rise followed by our landing in Amsterdam.

We landed early after an uneventful flight, and then the “fun” started. Our plane was assigned to a remote stand so we had to deplane and bus to the terminal where we encountered the immigration line that stretched all the way down the length of the terminal!😳 Schiphol is under construction and under staffed, so getting through immigration took two sweaty, tedious hours. We spent quite a bit of our time in line discussing our ancestry and thinking about dual citizenship with an EU passport!😂

Once we were through immigration we were able to find our driver and we were off to the Anantara Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and three packed days in Amsterdam before our cruise!