Day 1-2 in the Netherlands

I’m sitting at my aunt’s house in Driebergen the Netherlands as I type this! It’s been such a full week already and I don’t even know what to write about, so I’ll let the photos do the talking for me – a photo is worth a thousand words after all. 😉

Sunday April first we flew out of Fargo at 1:09 pm. We’d gotten up for the early service at church so the day was already a full one before we even stepped on the plane!

My siblings were pretty excited! It’s been 10 years since we’ve been there so my sister barely remembers the Netherlands.

Goodbye Fargo!!

This probably isn’t new to most of you, but it’s the first time I’ve been served mini pretzels on an airplane. It’s always been peanuts before. Funny how the little things make life more of an adventure!

Only 45 minutes later we saw the Minneapolis skyline and touched down.

Because of the timing of our flights we couldn’t book the early afternoon Amsterdam flight so we had to wait 7 hours for the next one. Waiting 7 hours in an airport makes you do all sorts of crazy things:

Try on Angry Bird Hats…

Try stunts on the moving walkways…

Take a nap…

Tell lame jokes and write in your journal…

Watch a random bird at the water fountain…
Take the tram back and forth 5 times…

Practice photography portraits in the tram…

Goof off in the tram…

And finally find our gate and watch our plane prepare for our flight.

We ended up being 45 minutes behind because our pilot was late. So we took more photos of each other…

and out the window at the sunset…

Finally we took off … goodbye Minneapolis and the good ol’ USA!!

Our flight lasted 8 hours, which I was really hoping to sleep through, but I just couldn’t sleep. The seat headrests are made for someone about 3 -6 inches taller than I am so it was pretty uncomfortable, and I was excited, and it was noisy. After struggling to sleep for a while I noticed on the map that we were over Iceland so I looked out my window and saw a faint glow which looked like clouds reflecting light. BUT I had a friend tell me to keep my eyes open for the Aurora Borealis (northern lights) this week in Europe. So I took out my camera and set the shutterspeed way down. Sure enough … the green northern lights showed up better in camera than what the eyes could see!!

Of course I had to wake up my mom and sis to take a look as the northern lights grew stronger in color and form! How cool is that!!

About 45 minutes later sunrise hit the wings:

And soon we saw the coastline of the Netherlands in the distance!!

Canals and Tulip fields … we are definitely in the Netherlands now!

I put my camera away for the rest of the day since we were busy meeting my Aunt and Uncle, finding our cabin, grocery shopping and unpacking. Actually I was so loopy from 24 hours of no sleep and long plane rides that I don’t think I could see straight enough to photograph anything! I did pretty well, but every once in a while the room would spin a bit. It didn’t help that my Aunt and Uncle were speaking Dutch and then English, and then back to Dutch again!! lol! We arrived in the Netherlands at 11am local time so we had a full day to stay up before we finally hit our beds 30 hours after we had woken up in Fargo. I don’t think my head was on the pillow before I was asleep!! Nothing like 30 + hours awake to help you sleep well. ; )

The following day we were all overtired and still a bit half dizzy so we didn’t do too much, just took our rented bikes out for a ride around the area. 

We found an old estate that used to belong to Audry Hepburn’s Grandmother and later became the place where the last German Kaiser spent his last years.

So that was our first two days!! I’ll be blogging more as I have time and if I get access to internet. The internet by the cabin is super slow, but my Aunt has faster internet. So I’ll do my best to keep everyone informed.

Until then… Happy Easter!

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