Welcome to Amsterdam!

Myself, some of our extended family and a few friends were supposed to set off for a Mediterranean adventure on Thursday, May 1, 2014. We were going to be flying to Venice, on Thursday, May 1, 2014, arriving on Friday, May 2, 2014. On Sunday, May 4, 2014, we would be embarking on a cruise with stops in: Bari, Italy, Katakolon, Greece, Santorini, Greece, Piraeus, Greece, Corfu, Greece, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

It is a six-hour time difference and even longer combination of flights! As it happens, we had a bit of a delay to our trip. Italy, Greece and Croatia would have to wait a bit longer for us. We had a serious lack of internet while away, so I will be posting about our experiences over the next week or so.

After myself, mom, Esther, Brian and Betty Jean arrived at the airport in Toronto nice and early, we found out that there was bad weather in New York and they changed our flights . . . to 6:00am the next day!

We weren't having it, so at the last minute, mom and I were sent off to a KLM flight to Venice, connecting through Amsterdam. It all happened so quickly, that we didn't have any time to chat with our other three travel companions and had to simply run off. We now have passport stamps from the Netherlands! I was pretty excited because many of the people I worked with (and will be working with again) are from a Dutch company and I’ll get to tell them about my stop next time I see them.

The food on the KLM flight was awesome and I even had a beer to go along with my dinner. It all came in cute little containers and tasted pretty good! It also seemed like they never stopped dropping by with drinks and snacks (although you could sleep and they would leave you be), which made our unexpected detour much more pleasant. I napped a bit, read a bit, visited mom a few rows up and watched a movie, all in addition to the food.

Finally, after our connection at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, we arrived at the Marco Polo Airport in Venice, Italy! We were hoping that shortly after this we would see our three missing travel companions, but they didn’t seem to be showing up. After some other family members and friends arrived on a flight from Paris, France, where they had already been exploring prior to our cruise, we gave up hope that the others would be arriving today.

Exhausted, we headed into Venice on a vaporetto, a type of waterbus, after a long hike out to the dock in the rain. We rolled our suitcases onto what we thought was the spacious boat and had a seat. I commented how smart it was to be able to roll suitcases on since this was the airport stop. Then, the actual vaporetto showed up . . . and it appeared to be very tiny! We had to lug our suitcases across the gangplank, where they were piled into the top section of the boat, while we crawled down underneath. We watched in sadness during the trip as rain poured down on a few suitcases belonging to members of our group. Hopefully our accommodations would have lots of blankets to warm us up, since our clothes obviously wouldn’t be doing that!

We ended up taking the wrong vaporetto and were a bit far from the apartments we would be staying in. We had to cross the Realto Bridge, which is composed of approximately a million steps, with our giant, soggy suitcases in tow. Luckily, two very nice tourists helped me out because I am just too small to be dragging a bag that large up and down stairs! We finally ended up in our apartments and after trying to get some messages through to our missing travel companions, mom and I passed out for the night in a series of naps. We hoped that this would get us on Italy time for the rest of our trip!

Yay! Fireworks!

I really like that these long weekend things happen pretty much every month! When you work a standard Monday-to-Friday-9-to-5 (well, I actually do 8:30 am to 4:30 pm) job, long weekends are the coolest thing ever!

I kept myself busy and spent tons of time outside because we almost had some Ontario-like weather temperature-wise. What I really liked was that this didn't translate to Ontario-like weather humidity-wise. Much easier for a person with cystic fibrosis!

Friday, the boyfriend and I had poutine pizza . . . our new favourite thing that we probably shouldn't have ever consumed more than once. It's actually so good though!

On Saturday, I decided we were definitely going to the beach. If I was home in Ontario I would be, so I was definitely going to be doing it here! Being by the water also made the temperature so much more bearable. There was a strong breeze (which was also good because there was no way I was staying in the water that long!) that kept us cool and we did try the water out once. I was also a big dork and had my hat, sunglasses and layers of sunscreen on. It wasn't fruitless though, I didn't get burnt at all! The boyfriend was not so lucky.

On Sunday, we decided to head over to UBC and wander around. We saw the flagpole plaza. It's such a pretty spot because the campus opens right up to the mountains and it's just like "Bam! Canada!" How appropriate for the Canada Day long weekend! There were also these super cool squishy seat things (also notice how they are white, so the glaring sun doesn't heat them up much and they can be sat on . . . science, friends). We also headed down to the rose garden where I decided to have a photo shoot since I matched the roses so well. I could even kind of smell them (like I'm pretending to do), unusual for me!

Here's the only bad part of the weekend . . . really, the only bad thing since I've been out here. You've probably guessed it . . . the crows. Yes, I am bringing them up again. This time, we were walking through UBC (not anywhere near where I live) and I saw one sitting up on one of the banners around the campus. I am legitimately scared of these things from my past encounters and the boyfriend was making fun of me and saying how it was going to get me. Obviously we didn't think it actually would, but just as we had walked past it (together!) it swooped down behind me and it's wing hit my back! Just like the other time! Except this time, I didn't have a jacket and was wearing a tank top. So, I started to cry. There's pictures. Yep, awesome. I'm convinced it was aiming for me because there's no way that it would have just happen to hit me instead of him! I'm also convinced that it likes my hair. It must be the same colour as some crow predator or something. Or maybe it looks like nest material. I don't know, but I've had just about enough! Fledgling season was supposed to be over! I'm also probably going to be known at work as "Crazy Crow Girl" or something.

On to happier things. Monday. The day I had been waiting for. Fireworks! Now, obviously you can't see fireworks during the day, so we had to do something. We went for a walk in Pacific Spirit Park! Most of it was okay, except for hills. I hate hills. We've also decided that the boyfriend must scare people off because every single person we passed said hello to us, but that never, ever happens when he's alone. It also happened at the grocery store before. Weirdo.

After cooling down from the walk, we headed towards the beach because we had a plan to be able to watch BOTH sets of fireworks . . . and also not get stuck downtown until 3:00 am. From the beach, you could see the high fireworks above the buildings and hear them too. Across the water, in West Vancouver, you could see the whole show because they were out on a barge in the inlet. Good plan too because transit was crazy that day! As we were getting to the beach, the bus stopped to let people off and then made a funny noise and shut down. We figured we might as well walk from where we were since we didn't know what was going on, but just as we stepped out, this river of green slime started pouring out of the bottom of the bus and running along the curb. That couldn't have been healthy. Also, for my environmental engineering friends, you might want to look into how great that is going into the storm sewers.

All in all, a great weekend! Yay! Fireworks!