Schipping Out

(Background: I have been sent to one of my company's offices near Alicante, Spain to help some people there. This is the travel tale.)

At SFO, they agreed to check my suitcase through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to Alicante, good.

The plane would be a couple of hours late, not so good, but when all was said and done, around 11 AM local and half past midnight me, I banged around one of the hubs of Schiphol's many spokes like a moth with too many lights, managing to find my way to my reserved Yotel "cabin",

a pod room that's as good a sanctuary as many, and quite a bit handier and cheaper. And about three hours, some sleep, and a few strange banging and clicking sounds later, I checked out of the Yotel somewhat the better for wear.

My hope was to see a sort of mini-museum representing the Rijksmuseum at the airport, but it's pretty similar to SFMOMA's mini-store at SFO, a museum store, no more or less. But I did get a very European tuna-on-crostini right in front of the Yotel, at an eatery nearly covered by a very large green translucent disk. Sparrows who inhabit every massive interior space like the Schiphol used it as a hunting perch, scoping out the newly-departed diners and swooping down to score the latest round of crumbs.

The weather was sulky and quite wet; it doesn't pay to forget that Amsterdam is  well north of Calgary in latitude. And so I dismissed at that point any thought of outside activities, not that I had enough time to head for town... the 14 minutes the airport sign estimated to reach the vicinity of my gate proved to me pretty accurate - amazing, I might as well be on 680 seeing the board estimating time to SJC. Only another hour until the 737 flight to Alicante.

It seemed quick, I went to the carousel, bags came and were taken - but not mine, oh, no, the machine has stopped, it's done, no more disgorging. I saw no one who looked official within a quarter mile of the baggage claim save a security officer waylaying people trying to go the wrong way, argh! Well, I guess I'd better take my backpack and move along to the hotel.

(TBC)