With some of the insanely cheap airfare deals around lately we decided to do a short trip to the Netherlands and Belgium even though I am short on vacation time. I only had enough time to do a Saturday-Wednesday trip but at $316 RT from DTW it was too good to pass up. Many of our trips involve odd routings to keep things cheap\get better planes so it would be a welcome change to have an uncomplicated trip from Detroit for once.
Of course Air Canada screwed that up 2 days before we left and were told we either needed to leave 5 hours earlier or 1 day later. Neither were attractive options so I had to play my own advocate and spoon feed them alternate itineraries. As a quick tip I’ve found that searching for your own workable options can often be better than letting an airline tell you your options as there is usually a pretty limited set of alternatives their systems give them or they think they know the policy when they really don’t. For example I made the mistake of asking if I could change my departure city to a Canadian one and was told ‘No the system won’t allow that.’ I knew that wasn’t true so I asked to change my flight to AC8235 (or whatever it was)without mentioning cities and she was able to ticket that just fine even though it was departing from Windsor Canada.
Anyway on approach to Amsterdam we circled for quite a while due to fog. When we landed I could see why. We had no idea we were about to touch down as visibility was maybe 100ft or so.
With the various delays and shockingly long lines we weren’t able to see the Anne Frank Museum. Everything else was pretty empty so we were a bit surprised the line was so long.
On the positive side there were relatively few tourists – there were maybe 10 other people in the Royal Palace at the same time as us
While it was raining\misting most of the time it did clear up a bit for the evening of day 1 and the afternoon of day 2 which worked out really well as we were headed to Zaanse Schans to see some Dutch windmills
Of course Air Canada screwed that up 2 days before we left and were told we either needed to leave 5 hours earlier or 1 day later. Neither were attractive options so I had to play my own advocate and spoon feed them alternate itineraries. As a quick tip I’ve found that searching for your own workable options can often be better than letting an airline tell you your options as there is usually a pretty limited set of alternatives their systems give them or they think they know the policy when they really don’t. For example I made the mistake of asking if I could change my departure city to a Canadian one and was told ‘No the system won’t allow that.’ I knew that wasn’t true so I asked to change my flight to AC8235 (or whatever it was)without mentioning cities and she was able to ticket that just fine even though it was departing from Windsor Canada.
Anyway on approach to Amsterdam we circled for quite a while due to fog. When we landed I could see why. We had no idea we were about to touch down as visibility was maybe 100ft or so.
With the various delays and shockingly long lines we weren’t able to see the Anne Frank Museum. Everything else was pretty empty so we were a bit surprised the line was so long.
On the positive side there were relatively few tourists – there were maybe 10 other people in the Royal Palace at the same time as us
While it was raining\misting most of the time it did clear up a bit for the evening of day 1 and the afternoon of day 2 which worked out really well as we were headed to Zaanse Schans to see some Dutch windmills
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