Food Glorious Fooo… err, wait a minute…!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

We are due to catch our evening flight to Portugal. I’ve literally stopped at the house to collect the bags and the rest of the family and after that the next stop was the check-in desk after the car ride to the airport.

Now our stomaches are rumbling and we’ve decided that we need dinner. There will be a light “meal” on board the plane but it arrives at what will be our children’s normal bedtime and even with the excitement of the flight to keep them awake for a little longer, I can see that at the very least the kids need food in the tank before then.

There is a Food Court  but last  time we were here, we only ordered drinks as we’d eaten at home already, l and since I dislike McDo and the golden arches with a passion, we head to the food court where  I know there is a small play area as well.

Instantly both kids are sketchy on what they want to eat, but Pizza gets nomimated  and Himself goes up to queue up and order whilst I herd kids to the ladies toilets to do the necessary and to scrub their filthy paws before eating.

Both procedures took necessarily long as neither kid was in a co-operative mood and we still had to wait ages for Himself to arrive back at the table with a large slice of pizza, since it appeared that the the queue was as long as the staff here are too short.

One look at the pizza told me that it wasn’t my cup of tea, but the kids were ravenous and started on it, Himself asked me to go choose something for myself and to please come back with another piece of pizza for the kids.

I checked out the salad bar. Sadly the veggies on offer looked not just a tad tired, but flat out exhausted so I skipped that section. They are calling it a  “food court”  but by my estimation it’s rather a ramshackle array of culinary bedmates trying to look better than the food that was actually on offer.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

There are menu boards but the food  in the photos don’t quite look the same as what I can see before me in this “market”.

The Asian part had no queue of people which made the offerings there more tempting, but the area that offered the most direct access to the Asian offering was roped off and by the time I walked the long way around, there was a queue of 6 people in front of me.

I look at the menu and decide that it didn’t look remarkable, so  maybe the burgers would still be better after all, or at least quicker. There were long lines at two cashiers, even those there were other tills also available (closed).

I stand in line, I mean, how long can it take to get Fast Food? too darned long as it turns out.

I wait close to 20 minutes to get served and then another 10 for the food to arrive… the kids still haven’t gotten their second piece of pizza ( I did that last on purpose so theirs would stay hot and because I thought that the burger queue would be a quick turnaround one) wrong!!!!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

So after an age, I’m standing with a cold burger and fries in the pizza queue… and it’s another 15 minutes before I have everything that everyone wanted complete on one tray.

I pay and hurry back to our table.  Himself and the kids confess that they ate pizza more because they were starving hungry than because they felt it was particularly edible, and so the piece I bring is poked at, and a minimal effort is made before it’s rejected.

I’m therefore left with a stone cold offering of burger and fries and most of ends up in the bin because it’s far from appetizing. Grrrr on all levels.

Come on Schipol, how hard IS it to get some brains? We have the technology!

If Kiwidutch were in charge I’d be ripping this place apart tomorrow, and this is what I would set up in place of what’s there now.

1) I’d take great photos of each of the limited menu items available. they would be prominently displayed in large  format photos with a simple tag each.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

2) My Customers would choose from the photos what they want and pay at the cashier for any mix from any of the food “court” offerings. One burger, One Asian pork with noodles, one pizza with meat topping please… pay in one hit for this plus drinks, …receive a ‘ticket” with your order on it and a number.

3) Go to your table with your drinks and keep an eye on an electronic board for your number to come up, Et Voila all of your food is ready and hot at one time, and you go up and collect it when your number shows…

Hot food, less queuing and  happy customers, no??? Surely it can’t be that hard to organise?

Staff at the actual food outlets were friendly, although I noticed a tendency for some staff at the burger place to speak Dutch to customers who clearly didn’t speak the language, and the staff at the cashiers didn’t bother to smile or be particularly helpful or organised ( e.g. you have to get a cup of tea right by the till, but the tea bags are way back down the line so you have to squish backwards  past other waiting customers to get something to actually put into your hot water)

That’s just plain lazy organisation.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch

As we left to catch our flight, Himself and I vowed to never eat here again, we have better chance of hot food that is  more edible at the dreaded McDo.

.. and that’s a very bad conclusion to have to come to.   Ouch.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Slip into this side pocket and let me take you to the aiport…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

So much for the surprise… I ruined it by being sick on the way home, but now the tummy bug is gone and I’m concentrating on getting my travel photos into shape pronto.

It’s been a bit of a general body shock for all of us coming back to the Netherlands (Tummy bug not withstanding) because it was 36 C during the day in Portugal and 25 C at night and we landed back home to a chilly, windy daytime 16 degrees C.

The shock was not lessened by our neighbours chirpy quip that “ Lucky you didn’t come back a week ago, it was cold then and it’s warmed up just yesterday. good hey?”  Warmed up?  Ack, what a difference two and a half thousand kilometers makes!(especially in North /South directions).

What impressed me more was the Himself had had the foresight to pack the pull-overs that had been totally unused in Portugal on the very top of the main suitcase so we didn’t need to scatter half the contents of the bags onto the airport floor to haul them out and get them on. Very good thinking indeed my Sweet.

If you haven’t deduced by now, Himself and I are lovers of warm to hot, preferably dry, climates. You can keep your snow, unless it arrives at our home on a postcard.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

So,  Family Kiwidutch escaped to beautiful Portugal in mid August 2010,  grab your toothbrush and come and hitch a ride….

First we have a night flight, so I start work very early in the morning, come home, have a half hour rest, then freshen up, sling my toothbrush into the otherwise packed bag and we drive with our neighbour to the Schipol Airport. We have some fantastic neighbours who drive but don’t own a car.

For the last 10 years that Himself and I have owned a car we have come to a fabulous arrangement, No matter the day or night, or the weather, one of these neighbours drops us off and picks us up from the airport. In return, they get the use of our car the whole time we are away.

They are careful drivers and they use the opportunity to visit friends in places harder to get to by public transport, make day trips, or short overnight ones to Germany… or lug home stuff for DIY projects  that would be difficult on their bicycles, (although if they need to do that at other times they sometimes just borrow the car for an afternoon too) and they generally appreciate  the use of it without the hassle and expense of having to hire a car at different times during the year.

They also look after the house and it’s an arrangement that works brilliantly for all parties, since emerging from an airport, tired, jet-lagged ,shunting luggage and carrying sleeping children on our shoulder is an art form that I’d really prefer not to master.

Yes, yes,  Dutch trains are very efficient, but it’s the connecting and getting the bags on board and off again and then onto a tram and then the walk home from the tram…and the extra time involved that we can just do without. Plus we get driven home, door to door, brilliant when the jet-lag is heavy and you really just want to sleep.

So… as dusk falls we tumble out of the car at Schipol. They are constantly tearing down old parts of the airport to make way for the new, so the view changes with every visit…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Little Mr. delights on excitedly screeching ” Plane!!!!” when he sees one, (funny how you always do at airports?) and I bend his brain by telling him that the winner of the game is the first one to see a boat. That kept him busy for a full five minutes the first time I pulled it ( but he was then four), now that he is a Grown up Five, he’s got wise and quickly said ” Silly, Mama,  there are no boats!”  but I noticed him not so furtively looking around for some anyway.

Birds are swarming in the air in arching flocks and then neatly divided and settled on these tall light standards .. sleeping or plane spotting like me?…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Volcanic balance of Reasonable Planning, Personal Responsibility, and on Who’s shoulders should it rest?

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

I’ve been mulling over yesterdays post and the comments made on it.

Both Himself and I, in our former single days and and now in our married ones, have been extremely fortunate to have been able to travel a lot and we try hard to be prepared for the unexpected when we do.

Himself hitch-hiked from The Hague to India when he was eighteen years old… amazing stories from his travels will be told one day in future blog posts… he saved hard and also travelled on a shoestring budget for 10 months throughout the Pacific, as did I (but different places), and together we have travelled to out of the way places like the Cape Verde Islands and São Tomé and Principe.

We have experienced hospitality from people who gave willingly and with great pleasure of the very little they had, we have been dug out of a ditch, had injuries patched up, been caught up in transport  mishaps. I’ve had a multitude of rats share a bedroom with me in the deep tropical darkness,  had suspected Malaria,  have gotten  accidentally closer to some tropical crawlies than was probably safe or wise and generally flaunted the concept of Health and Safety in modes of transport, routes, accommodations and food, and yes,  lived to tell the tale.

These days travelling  with young children our travels are far less wild, but often just as mad, just in different ways.

We  have a budget, a back-up plan and the Travel Fund budget and our savings are carefully planned.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Now let’s look at the events of the last week and a few thoughts that it generates…  as in…We hired a rental car 10 days ago as we needed an extra vehicle for a few days and today I checked the prices for same vehicle and it was more than three times  the price. Ditto the hotels we used.

So “being prepared” is one thing, but in all seriousness and in total honesty can anyone also say that you should have to budget on Euro 400,- per night for a family of four (that would now be 5 nights counting tonight = Euro 2000)  and then add in train costs, ferry costs (ALL of whom have dramatically increased their prices during this event) and then add food/petrol/phone and general living costs to this again.?
This means that if you are traveling with a family then you could *easily* be adding say Euro 4,000 plus.

That’s NOT what people expected to happen when they say, booked a low cost holiday for the short Easter break.

Let alone the worry because people have jobs to get back to, family events and obligations, and in many cases no hope of a refund on their air ticket either.

Yes, insurance…  you buy it of course, thinking they “will help” in an emergency, but most insurance companies appear to be going to try very hard to wiggle out of this one,  “Acts of God” not being covered by most of them.

Then there is the loss of earnings because your employer isn’t going to pay you wages for the week you couldn’t come to work… What I’m saying is, people *should*  of course plan for emergencies but that all this isn’t just a double whammy. but one after another after another, after…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Where does reasonable planning stop and the madness of ” good grief, do you seriously expect me to  pretty much write you a blank cheque?” begin?

The Air industry IMHO *should* have a built in tax on every fare to fund this kind of emergency, at the very least give decent catering to those stuck in airports and they shouldn’t be having to wait 12 hours or beg for basic things like a bottle of water.

The Air industry is in trouble, we all know it, but maybe some low-cost fares are too low for our own good, and everything needs to be priced up at least Euro 50,  across the board. In this case it’s also the Airport Authorities  who should wear some of  the responsibility too, not just the airlines.

I hope it was clear from my post that I DO already see the BBC1,2, BBC Word etc (I mentioned that they were standard TV channels here, as well as CNN) and I also read the French and Dutch media so  I hope I am as informed as I can manage.  In the end my post was never meant to reiterate what’s already in the News already, but to show you the human stories that I personally encountered in Schipol Airport.

It’s probably a very objective view to simply state that people should be prepared to fend for themselves but in a foreign county where you are unfamiliar with the language and the way things work that can be harder than it first seems.

It’s been proven that human beings can’t make good choices when they are being given only minimal information and don’t make the best choices when they are under stress. me I think that “exhausted from getting off a 14 hour flight and have then spent another 22 hours on an airport floor” qualifies as a fair example of stress.

Maybe it appears to be the case of “survival of the fittest” and “each man should fend for himself“,  for better or worse this touches me on a personal levels so I am not so objective. I feel that the responsibility, corporate or personal is not so black and white, the decisions not so cold and sterile.

Am I a Saint?  sorry, severely not, I have many failings that I’m acutely aware of and probably plenty many more that I am not aware of… in the end I  am concerned for people, love to offer hospitality, feed people and these things just came together and spurred me to action.

Should people have a back-up plan?, should they have reserve savings for ” contingencies” ? and should they prepare for every eventuality? yes of course, in an ideal world, but people take holidays and set up business and have busy lives,  time for all this extra preparation is limited, and just as if you were to have a tragedy happen at home, say, a house fire, there are some instances where circumstances just tumble out of your control, are bigger than you can  manage on your own and too overwhelming, too much to deal with with the resources that you have at hand, prepared for or not.

That’s when we can all hope that if by the Grace of God we are ever in that kind of situation that someone will extend a hand of friendship,  ease our stress and tiredness and give us hope. To be honest I have gained great pleasure in the hospitality and kindnesses shown to me, but if  I’m seriously truthful, I actually find even more pleasure in giving… it reminds me to look outside of myself, to always look for the humanity and know that in some tiny way I am giving back to every person how has helped me, not just during my various travels but throughout my life to date.

Himself and I operate on the principle that most people we meet will be fabulous, genuine, friendly, honest human beings, yes we have been wrong a few times, and got conned, but mostly people who have met have  vastly exceeded our expectations in kindness, openness,  friendship and added to our lives immeasurably both when we were the givers of the acts of kindness and the recipients of them.  Himself still has wonderful contact with people met in the strangest of circumstances during his travels decades ago…

Our own experiences naturally shape our own views and on my many travels, often in developing countries where resources were few,  complete strangers have extended a hand of friendship to me in the smallest and greatest of ways and that I have never forgotten how that made me feel.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Your photo’s today are a beautiful sunset on the beach due to the volcanic ash in the air.. actually there is a FAR better set of photos taken by my friend “Sackville”, I have her permission to use the photo I want to post but there’s a problem in doing it… it’s a stunning photo so pop back some time and I’ll try and get it onto the page a.s.a.p.

What you AREN’T being told about the European Airport disruption…

I have had reservations about posting this post, because it goes against the grain to advertise things I do for others in a public manner.  I prefer to do it quietly and without fuss. On the other hand, I am also very upset about what I saw and want to let people know that the News Bulletins are not telling us… and I want my kids to read this one day when they are older so that  they will know why we do the things we do as they grow up and why people filter in and out of our home, sometimes under very strange circumstances.

I hope that our example will mean that it will be completely normal for them to carry on this “tradition”.

I was getting rather annoyed that airports are not doing enough to help stranded travellers.

see my posthttp://kiwidutch.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/new-post-65/

Schipol is a massive European hub, there are 90  thousand stranded people in the Netherlands due to volcanic ash clogging up our skies and photo’s on the  6.00 p.m. News of stranded passengers (especially those with young children) sleeping on lino floors and on the baggage belts made my heart break and my blood pressure  rise as it was clear that little was being offered to stranded travellers.

I started to dream at night that I was feeding all the poor people on the airport floor … soups, salads and tons of pasta !

Friday night after work, I decided to do something about it and so “Sackville”  and I drove the 45 minutes to Schipol Airport ( near Amsterdam) and to ask if anyone wanted a bed here, back home with us.

Sadly many many people were tired and desperate for a bed after a night  on the airport floors already BUT too scared to “loose their place” by the check-in desks because when it all opens again it’s a free for all first-come-first-served scramble to rebook tickets.

I had my camera in my pocket as usual, but as we wandered around a fairly deserted airport, people slumped dejectedly in seats looked uncomfortable, others huddled on the lino floor with a jacket maybe their only blanket it was crystal clear that I wouldn’t be taking photos of people’s misery.

Speaking in French and English , (and Dutch with Airport staff) we spoke to quite a few people in the two or more hours we were there. Here is what we heard…

Hotels that would usually charge Euro 80-100  a night have bumped up their prices to Euro 170 a night ( and beyond!) “Supply and demand”  being the catchphrase here, Me: I call it the underbelly of Capitalism, that “Capitalizes” on the misfortune and misery of people stuck in a situation beyond their control.

Airlines appear by all accounts to  have given many/some passengers one paid night in a hotel ( only if they are travelling  on a European Airline, nothing at all,  if they are not)) and then left people to their own devices, and a Euro 10 food voucher per person to use within the airport per day for me is a joke. ( Come On!!! Do you know the cost of airport food?!!!) … and in cities such as Amsterdam the hotels have simply booked full, so people can’t get a room even if they would like, so some spent Thursday night in a Hotel, to find that (a) they had no money to extend their stay  and mostly (b) that many of the hotels already had other reservations previously booked for subsequent nights anyway so it was a case of ” Sorry no room at the Inn”, Time to go folks…

All of these have returned to the airport simply because they have nowhere else to go.

Back on websites and in the airports themselves,   airlines are drip-feeding stranded passengers hourly updates… or limited information (at 8.00 pm in the evening) such as “airport traffic definitely closed until 7.00 a.m. tomorrow morning” …  then another few hours later, that rolls over to “ traffic closed until 11.00 a.m. tomorrow morning“  and so forth,  so everyone is limbo, getting their hopes up each time, every time…

They are finding this lack of information to be very unsettling, after all, who wants to pay money that they can’t afford to find an alternative route,  maybe days out of their way, in countries where they don’t speak the language, when suddenly a few hours it may “appear” that the check- in desks might be opened again?

That’s IF you have the money to plan an alternative route anyway… and IF an overland/ferry possibility exists for the destination you are trying to get to.

That’s forcing people , some with very small children to camp on the floors of the airports, they had no access to TV  (at least that we could see when we walked around) and ONLY  Friday night when we were there was there an announcement that internet would now be free of charge…(duh! they could have done that far earlier!)

We wanted to bring a family home, but apparently up to 1500 people (many families) are camping in the Transit Area on the other side of Customs Control, and visa problems (or some such.. this bit of info was fuzzy)  means that if they leave that area they might not be allowed back though…  so naturally we couldn’t go and speak with them, or bring any of them home.

One Frenchman we spoke to had seen TV news somewhere, somehow, but it was in Dutch only and so I went to Dutch airport staff and asked if someone could Pleeeease get hold of a TV set, park it on an English speaking channel ( CNN and BBC 1,2, and BBC world are all standard channels over here) and let stranded people see the News updates.

It was really clear that because of this insulation and isolation, most people we talked to were sure that things might be back normal in a few hours and all were shocked when they found out that the volcano was MORE active and not less in the last 24 hours and expected to be the same or more in the next 24…. and subsequently,  36 etc…

They had no news and No clue!!!

Airport authorities are set up to transfer people from A to B… not to keep them for any length of time, they are giving Burger vouchers and a few sandwiches… ugh. it’s been 4 days now and will probably continue…  You think  stranded passengers might be looking forward to their next “meal” with joy by now ? methinks not…

Other groups had zero money left, that’s no problem we are not charging for accommodation or food etc,  but they had a group too big for us to handle, sorry I can’t deal with 22 people, or in one case approximately 50 people… or others who  just had far too much baggage for our small car…  so we kept walking and talking to people.

Some spoke no English, German, French or Dutch, so our endeavors with them were truly limited, and we quickly realised that the communication barriers were beyond us in these cases…

A couple with their son, were delighted at the idea, consulted together, Thanked us and then declined, They too were desperate to stay as close to the check-in counter as they could, scared that if a tiny window of opportunity opened and only a few could take it, that they would miss out if they were not on the spot.

We explained how the evening News makes it clear that the chances of any change in the current situation is  highly unlikely for a few days at least… No, they think that because airport staff are posting “ 11.00 a.m. tomorrow” that they might be better here close to the check-in desk.

We even offered to being them back to the airport before 11.00 tomorrow, they decline thinking that the queue by the check-in desks will grow too big whilst they are away…

I speak to Airport staff in Dutch… apparently the airline staff are not allowed to say ” we think the airport will still be in all likelihood closed for the next 2-3 days or more…” hence the drip-feeding of information and the false hope of many of the passengers.

Eventually after two hours we found someone to take home…

Sooo, we have had an “Airport Refugee” staying with us this weekend… a British girl,  and  parents managed to get a channel ferry ticket in Calais, they stay here Friday and Saturday … so I’ve been prepping for a meal for eight and the  Sackville Two have been showing her the sights of The Hague (or a little bit of it at least)!

You know, we have been having the best time !

We have made three new friends, learned something new about where they live, exchanged email  and snail mail addresses, helped them get on-line to sort out onward travel plans that circumvent the airports, and hopefully shown them that Dutch hospitality is not limited to the dire experience that they have had at the airport.

I know that their lives are not in danger and that there are so many who suffer SO much worse around the world, but these are close to home, almost literally on my doorstep and I felt that I should at least try and do something to help…

I can only stress that IF you have an air-bed, a mattress or a spare couch, can provide an extra meal, and you live anywhere in the world where there may be stranded travellers at this moment, then please consider if it might be possible to take someone in for a night.. even just a bed and then back to the airport, anything is more comfortable than a cold hard airport floor.

Who knows? you might make a new Friend and certainly you will give your guest a more positive perspective of your countries idea of hospitality.

You will truly be a “Local Heart, Global Soul”.

Please at least know that some of them can’t find alternative accommodation, or an alternative route home… they may have run out of money and they will definitely be tired, dirty, lonely and worried, disorientated by the lack of information and if they don’t speak the local language: confused. Most certainly at the very least a warm shower would be greatly appreciated.

People are what this world is about, not stuff, not profit, not commodities. Flesh and blood human beings, that the media show as camping on floors, but not the real information of how uncomfortable it is, how little and how piecemeal their information they are getting, how they had to beg for bottles of water after 12 hours… how little they are being given as how all the commercial companies in this appear (to this outsider at least) to be trying as hard as possible to pass the Buck and not take responsibility for these stranded people.

The group of 50 we spoke to had a British guy who was looking after a group of migrant workers, they spoke next to no English, had no money, had landed in Düsseldorf,  where they were told  to leave the airport,  they had no visa’s or paperwork for Germany, they were bussed to Schipol and after a long bus trip were sleeping on the floors here when we pased by and spoke to a few of them…  lots of families with young children in this group.  I hear that in Bangkok and Tokyo , and other airports there are similar problems if not worse… Shame on them!

I know that airlines have financial problems, but if you added Euro 1,- to every ticket on every flight around the world and it went by Law into a special fund to provide  instant passenger assistance  in this sort of situation then surely that would be an option?

Common Sense and Forward Planning… is it so hard?

Certainly no-one  in the airline industry wants to to cough up financially.

I’m angry that airports around the world don’t have a “disaster plan” where more is organised, quickly, efficiently and that no one with authority seems to be taking charge and putting words into action to relieve some  of the stress of these poor people.

Let’s see  how the next days unfold and  see what might happens in the next days,  …who knows? maybe we will see more guests in the Kiwidutch “hotel”.

USA: Getting ready for takeoff and a loo with a view…

(photo © kiwidutch)

I’m starting a travel log of our recent holiday in the USA, and small side trip to Canada.

I didn’t manage to make a ” live” journal whilst there for two reasons: First as any traveler will know from experience, we were far too busy meeting people, seeing places, eating new foods and having fun ( not that I don’t find writing fun), but it’s not really possible on a practical level when visiting a beach, eating out, on car journeys or in a museum.

I also have not yet mastered the impossible art of writing and taking photographs at the same time, so I have taken a zillion photos, have notes already jotted onto the laptop ( off-line) a few brochures and my memory to guide me and am getting into gear a.s.a.p. after the holiday (that’s now). Secondly, the whole world is not yet wifi, or even internet connected and my internet connections during the trip were few and far between, so whilst I can certainly live without the Net, I can’t run a daily live blog without it.

Traveling to New Zealand during the Dutch Summer School holidays last year gave us a nice long relaxed holiday but did have one downside that only kicked in afterwards. We didn’t know that a long Dutch grey winter, followed by an insipid Spring, then travel to 6 weeks of a New Zealand winter, coming back to a fairly “summer-less” summer in the Netherlands and then a good old grey-dark-wet Dutch winter again would have such a physiological and physical effect on us. Hubby and I were excessively cold all the time, bone weary, more grizzly and ragged, when we knew we shouldn’t be and didn’t want to be. I already have a sleep problem, it was definitely worse, as was my asthma.

Somewhere in dark December 2008 we realised that a large absence of sunlight during the preceding year was probably a major contributor to our general mood and energy levels. We have therefore been looking forward to this summer trip to the States all of 2009.

It’s a balmy 27 degrees C when we leave the Netherlands, more or less the same temp that it has been for ages now, if you disregard the odd cooler day glitch. We have been enjoying visits to the park, beach and walking , it certainly got us into the holiday mood. Meanwhile enough of the talking and lets get to the traveling…

No, sadly I can’t fit you into my suitcase but I can take you along with me in for a virtual tour…

(photo © kiwidutch)

If you have to wait in Schipol Airport, after going though customs etc, Go upstairs to the food court area, at the back by the windows to the right is a small children’s play area with climbing frame etc, and at the very end of these are restrooms. I can’t of course vouch for the Gent’s next door,but the Ladies has what I think is the coolest loo view ever… the cublicles are of course closed off as usual, but the floor to ceiling glass windows mean that you can stand and wash your hands whilst watching the planes on the apron and on the runway, landing, taking of and taxiing… what a wonderful bit of brilliant creative planning on the part of the airports designers.

(photo © kiwidutch)

First we fly from Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport to Zurich, Switzerland….

It’s not easy to get a photo out of the thick windows, but spot the patterns of the canals.

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

We fly to Zürich , change terminals and then make ourselves comfortable for the longer flight from Zürich to Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)