Romania 2014: Layover in Amsterdam (part 1)

June 27-28, 2014

Alina and I left Bakersfield at 8:30am Friday, June 27 to depart for our trip to Romania.  I dropped Alina off at the Bradley International Terminal at LAX, then took the car to La Hacienda Hotel, where we would park the car for the duration of our trip.  I picked up some sandwiches and rode a shuttle to meet Alina and our luggage at the terminal.  

We check in our luggage, each about 5 lbs over the weight limit.  So, with some shuffling, stalling, and a little bit of magic, our 2 large checkins, were accepted.  We went through TSA fairly quickly, ate our sandwiches in the newly designed International terminal food court, then went to wait in line at our KLM flight to Amsterdam.  

The plane we boarded was huge, with 2 decks!  Alina and I didn’t have adjoining seats, so we asked for a few favors and ended up sitting next to each other.  We sat next to a dutch lady, who had just spent time touring some of our favorite places in California.  We were hoping to sleep for the entire time, so we took melatonin, a natural sleepy herb.  We enjoyed beverages, a meal of airplane food, a large movie selection, and eventually sleep.  I was able to sleep for about 2 hours and Alina had a 4 hour stretch.  

We ended our 9 hour and 45 min. flight talking to our Dutch neighbor, who was giving us some tips on how to make a rushed trip to the Amsterdam City Center within our 4 hour layover.  We didn’t want to miss our next departing flight to Romania, so I made notes on out plan of attack and then we exited the plane and went straight for the luggage lockers!

We stowed our luggage for €7, went through customs, bought round trip train tickets, and found the train platform with time to spare.  We waited next to an older Irish couple and chatted about their ministry in the Ukraine.  The attended the Baptist Church of Belfast and I really liked their accents!  We boarded the train and looked out at the flat, green landscape of the Netherlands.  We arrived at the train station only 40 minutes after we left the plane.  That gave us about 2 hours of speed-touring before leaving for the airport.  This was the plan:

00 Arrival, locker, passport control, customs

30 train

1:00 Amsterdam 

2:30 back on train

3:00 airport/customs

3:30 gate with 40 minutes

4:10 fly to Bucharest 

We left the train station and soaked in the Amsterdam atmosphere, of Dutch architectial buildings, multiple canals through out the city, storefronts with moral ambiguity, and of course, more bicycles than we had ever seen in both of our lives combined.  We spent our two hours wandering the streets, taking pictures, eating nutella and tomato/spinich/goat cheese crepes.  We reminisced about our past 6-hour layover in Amsterdam in 2011.  Seeing for the 2nd time gave us a second chance to make new memories.

Our time quickly passed and we made our way back to the train station, however, we were behind schedule and found ourselves waiting 10 unplanned minutes for our train to arrive.  After taking the train from the city back to the airport, we made a desk to customs and to our departing GATE, with time to spare >whew!<  We boarded our plane and had an uneventfully and sleepy flight to Bucharest, Romania.  

We arrived at the OTP Airport at 5:00pm, Saturday, June 28th and we were pretty tired.  Alina’s brother, Bebe, was there to greet us and take us to Alina’s mother’s home in Moreni, about 1.5 hours NW from Bucharest.  We were welcomed by Alina’s mom, Lydia, her brother Marius, his wife Augustina, and their 2-year daughter, Alina’s cute niece, Antonia.  

We ate dinner together which included a delicious vegetable, yellow beans, mamaliga (a cornmeal portage), and sarmale (cooked cabbage rolled meat and rice).  We also ate tomatoes and cucumbers.  We spent time giving gifts to our family and watch Antonia getting excited over tons of gifts from aunt Alina.