Arrival in Amsterdam

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport Main Entrance

 Monday and Tuesday were pretty long days.  The Villages Airport van picked us up at 9:30AM to take us and 3 other people to the airport.  We took a little side tour into another community in the area to pick up another person but it turned out that the office put them on the wrong list - they weren't going out until next month.  Even with the detour, we got to Orlando Airport several hours before our 2:12PM flight.  We had plenty of time to get through the long TSA line, have lunch, and relax in the lounge for over an hour.

View from Schiphol Observation Deck

Our United Airline flights were uneventful.  We flew from Orlando to Chicago, had a 2 hour layover, and then boarded the flight to Amsterdam.  We booked business class to get the larger, reclining seats, but still didn't get much sleep on the way over.  United's sleeper seats are not the most comfortable, but otherwise the service was fine.  We got into Amsterdam Schiphol  Airport about 9:15 this morning.  We were surprised at how easy immigration was.  There were no forms to fill out and, once we had our luggage, we just breezed on out.

Getting to the Airport Sheraton was easy too.  There were easy to follow signs.  We never even had to go outside, just up an inclined moving walkway and down a hall to the hotel lobby.  We booked this hotel so we would have a chance to acclimate to the time zone change before meeting up with our cruise group.  We are booked on a pre-cruise tour tomorrow afternoon before we officially board the ship and we wanted to be rested before then.  From past experience, arranging a room to check right into in the morning and getting a couple hours sleep right away is the best way to adjust.  We got up in time for a late lunch and went for a walk around the shopping plaza in the airport. Then after spending a few more hours reading and watching TV in our room, we had a light dinner in the hotel restaurant, walked over to the airport observation deck, and then came back to the hotel to go back to sleep at at 10pm Amsterdam time.  This will put us on track to get our bodies on Europe Standard time for tomorrow.  So far, a good start to this trip.

Found in Airport Near Observation Deck Entrance