A Bottle of Contact Solution Goes Kaput and Dracula’s Storm rolls into Boston

I passed the last hours in Amsterdam as I did the first – largely unconscious. As if my body were preparing for the time shift ahead of time, I found myself struggling to stay awake the whole day. After rooting out a seat on the train to Schiphol airport next to the public toilet and wishing for nobody to utilize the facilities only to see our hopes dashed at the very last moments before the train pulled out, we successfully found our way to our departure gate. Yet, we had to look twice at our tickets, which read a boarding time over an hour and a half before the plane actually took off. It turned out that security was, in fact, at the gate. We made it past the first two gatekeepers (I even threw in some Dutch which got a smile out of the agent) but Bill’s contact solution that had served him well through many a business trip did not survive the Atlantic crossing, meeting its demise in a blue trashcan at the gate.

The flight was smooth and comfortable, and the food was exceptional. We were extremely impressed. After high praise from Bill for the book The Historian, I started to read it on the flight. It was as good as he had said, and very creepy. Not giving anything away, the book is a take on the Dracula legend. That being explained, when the plane came to a soft landing in Boston, the weather suddenly turned south. It was literally like the storm that always followed Dracula blew into Boston Harbor. It was so bad that we sat a few feet from our gate, unable to move into position because the tower would not give us clearance to pull up to the retractable walkway for fear that the workers would be struck by lightning. But we made it back none the worse for wear, filled with fond memories of the Netherlands.

*Click on the picture for the full album of photos in the Netherlands!