Up Up and Away!

Last night someone had the bright idea to celebrate the New Year Spanish time as we had to get up at 3.30 for a flight. It sounded like great idea but what actually happened was we celebrated twice!  Once Spanish time and once Irish time and amidsts all that silliness we went to bed very late.  We hauled ourselves out of bed after about two hours sleep and rushed to the airport. The thing that I always forget is that the airport is busy at this unearthly hour and the queues for security are long. Luckily we were too anesthetised  by lack of sleep to stress much and once we tumbled onto the plane we snoozed all the way to Amsterdam.

I wouldn’t say we arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed but it wasn’t bad. We had a seven hour wait over for our connection so we took the train into Amsterdam for a wander. The city was very quiet. There weren’t many people about, a few strays from the night before and us.

There must have been a mighty party last night as the streets were strewn with debris – party poppers, bangers, food cartons, cans and bottles. It was impressive. As we walked about so the street cleaners appeared and systematically cleaned up. First the garbage was blown into piles by super blowers then the streets were hosed down and finally all the piles were removed.

We wandered the streets, drank some coffee – old fashioned Dutch coffee with little tubs of koffie melk on the side and ate a croissant.

The croissant was so awful that it was abandoned and we ended up eating frites with mayonnaise – not something a nutritional therapist should be seen eating for breakfast.

It was a bit of hodge podge trip down memory lane with the coffee and chips not that I used to eat them for breakfast, it was more of late night snack. Anyways by 11.20 (10.20 Irish time) we had consumed two ‘breakfasts’!

We’re about to board our plane for Bangkok now, en route to Vietnam, leaving the winter behind us for a few weeks.

We’re looking forward to our next food adventure.

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year and may all your dreams come true