2024 Travels

On our last night in Iceland, we needed to get to bed early because we had to be at the airport at 4:30am to catch a 6:10am flight to Amsterdam, flying budget Play. With four different alarms set, surely we wouldn’t miss our flight.

The temperature outside was almost at freezing point, but inside Jason had the temperature cranked up as if we were in the middle of the desert. You would have never thought that we were in one of the coldest climates. That day, we had visited the Phallogical museum in Reykjavik, which included an erect penis prop from the movie Friday the 13th Vengeance Bloodlines Part 2. This must have made an impression on me, because that night I had a nightmare that Jason was attacking me in my dream. I woke up screaming, “Jason!!!! Jason !!!!”. That is, Jason Voorhees from the movie, not Jason McDonald.

Somehow we got back to sleep only up be woken a few hours later to four alarms, slightly out of sync, going off. The sudden shock of the sound jolted us from our sleep so much that we hit heads and almost concussed one another. I can think of better ways of waking up.

We had twenty minutes to quickly get our stuff together and be ready for our airport transfer. This time, the check-in process went smoothly and without delays. We boarded the plane and took our seats. Well, Jason could have taken his seat anywhere. It was broken and lifted right off. He could use it as a floating device if we crash over water.

At this point, I could feel that I was starting to get the flu. Damn, that woman barking like a dog on our Icelandic tour; obviously it wasn't the 2-packet-a-day smoking habit that made Brenda from Bavaria cough so much. The cabin air pressure wasn’t great either. As we made our descent, my ears were blocked and I could hardly hear a word that was being said. I mean, it was half in Icelandic so I had no clue anyway. Everything was all muffled. Even when we landed, nada. I couldn’t hear a sound. I started to get worried that I may have had a permanent condition. “What’s that you’re saying, Jason?” Actually, on second thoughts this could be a blessing 😂.

We stood for almost an hour waiting for our baggage to be off loaded before we heard an announcement that the carousel number for our flight had changed. Karen (aka Jason McDonald) was going to complain to the manager about this. We moved from carousel 15 to 17. We waited for another couple a minutes and still nothing. We saw others from our flight move to carousel 18. It seems someone from Schiphol airport needed to go back to school to count.

We finally got our baggage and made our way to take the twenty-minute train journey to Amsterdam Centraal. The Netherlands now allows for passengers to tap their credit card without the need to buy a train ticket. But where do you tap? The machine was nowhere to be seen and Jason was such an eager beaver that he was willing to jump on board until he checked with the train conductor.

When we got to Centraal, we had a 10-minute walk through the busiest part of Amsterdam. Jason took us on the scenic route to our hotel located along the Singel canal. As we walked down our street, we realised that we were staying in the little Red Light district. Some sex workers seemed flat out quite literally, while others couldn’t seem to turn a trick.

Our hotel room had a great open view of the canal, perfect for people watching. All of sudden we noticed bus loads of tourists taking photos outside of our hotel. Do they think we are sex workers plying our trade along the canal? It’s actually a €140 fine to take photos or videos of sex workers, I reminded them. “Respect the sex workers”, I yelled. Unfortunately, there were no takers and we were left high and dry. We probably needed a red light to make it more obvious that we were open for business. Or maybe we needed to pay them 😂. Similar to the sex workers, we had the disinterested-distracted-by-our-phones look down pat. “Please, no more photos”. Now, we know what it’s like to be hounded by the paparazzi.

Turns out we were located next to the narrowest facade in Amsterdam, a famous tourist landmark. Even some of the tour boats going up the canal would drift by for people to take a few happy snaps of the building. The facade is a doorway width wide. The building, though, does get bigger behind the facade.

Our Hotel Manager was a strange older Dutch man, who clearly had issues with women, based on some of the misogynistic comments that he made. His parting words were: “If you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you”. And that’s exactly what happened. We only briefly saw him one day as he was preparing one of the rooms for another guest or when he poked this head out of the house with the narrowest facade, where he seemed to live. Maybe that’s why he was so eccentric.Read more