Luckily the airport wasn’t too crowded when we arrived. The most I had to wait around was for the bus from the boat to the terminal, after that everything when relatively quick. When my brother and I put our camera bags and backpacks through security, of course they took one look at my camera bag on X-ray and pulled it aside to manually search it. They also pulled my backpack aside, which had nothing really in it except a book and my computer charger. I am pretty sure they meant to pull my brothers camera bag aside instead of my backpack. One security guard said to the other as they grabbed my bag off the conveyor belt: “are you sure you grabbed the right one”, “yea” said the other. As they searched my bag it seemed like they weren’t finding what they were looking for. They searched every single pocket there was looking somewhat dumbfounded. My brother had all kinds of electronics in his bag, a camera, some lenses, a PSP, and a beat machine. I am positive they meant to grab his bag but grabbed mine instead and were too ashamed to admit they grabbed the wrong one. They never asked to search his bag. They gave mine back to me and we were off to find our gate. Makes you feel safe doesn’t it?
We had about an hour to kill until we could board our flight. Before we found our gate we decided to grab something to eat. There wasn’t too much of a choice around us, now that we had already passed through security, however there was a Legal Seafoods down the end of the corridor. It is only recently that I have learned to like seafood, my brother still doesn’t like it. It took a little convincing from my father and I to get him to agree to eat there. In the end he was happy with his buffalo chicken fingers, and I was very satisfied with a plate of teriyaki swordfish over rice and vegetables with a nice tall Sam Summer to wash it down. With a nice full stomach I was ready to fall asleep on the 6 hour plane ride ahead of us to Amsterdam. As we boarded, I was a little bummed to find out that our seats were on the right side of the plane. I have flown this route many times before and when you sit on the left side of the plane you can see the sunrise over the North Pole. It’s actually not the sun setting since the area around the North Pole has almost 24 hour daylight during the summer. It is more like instead of the sun setting and disappearing it is permanently stuck as a sunset until the earth rotates around enough for it to be time for the sun to rise again.
Our flight was delayed on the ground for 20 minutes due to weather over the Atlantic and heavy rains at Logan. Once we were up in the air it was one of they most turbulent rides across the Atlantic I have ever had. Here is a shot of the moon from 37,000 feet about sea level somewhere over the mid Atlantic.
Although the sun is very bright above the clouds we were flying into “night” sort of speak. Amsterdam is 6 hours ahead of us. The daylight didn’t last much longer. I thought I was going to be able to get some sleep but by the time we took off I was wide-awake. I read the book “Animal Farm” to pass the time. I had always wanted to read this book. I have actually “read” it before but it was for summer reading when I was in Junior High or something like that. I don’t think I read the whole book and the parts I did read I don’t remember now. A few days earlier I was at the Sheppaird Fairy show at the ICA in Boston. They had an edition of the book with a cover that he had designed. I decided to get it with my upcoming flight in mind and as a nice decoration on my shelf. It was a short book but I enjoyed it and it helped pass some time. The clouds broke just as we were flying over England. As we arrived in Amsterdam our landing took us right over the city. With the time difference, we were landing at 6am local time. The city was just starting awaken, there was little cars on the road and all the streetlights were still on because the sun was just starting to rise. The lights and sunlight looked awesome reflecting over the canals that go through Amsterdam. From the air it looks like such a beautiful city. Someday I will come here to stay for a while. I would love to walk the streets with my camera for a couple days, there is also so many other reasons to visit Amsterdam…
Sorry for the horrible picture. The light was low and my point and shoot had problems focusing. This was the only shot of Amsterdam I could get before the flight attendants made me shut of my camera. No electronics in use while the plane is landing!
Our connecting flight to Sweden was on time. They served us a light snack after we took off even though the ride was only an hour and 10 minutes. When the flight attendant asked me what I wanted to drink I almost said a beer. Then I thought about it, my last flight was on Eastern Standard Time, so it was no problem when I got a beer with our in-flight meal an hour or two before we landed; which was probably about midnight EST. However now that we were in Amerstam and on their time she probably would of looked at me funny if I ordered a beer at 7 in the morning. I’m not sure if beer was even an option that she had in here grey cart. Now that I look back on it, I should of just ordered a beer. What do I care if the flight attendant thinks I am an alcoholic? For me it was 1 o’clock in the morning, I didn’t want an orange juice at that time of night!
