After the decidedly troublesome trip back from Cancún to Providence, the final leg of our journey from Providence to Amsterdam couldn’t have gone more smoothly.
We took the bus from Providence to Boston, arriving for check-in more than two hours ahead of our flight’s scheduled departure time. With a strikingly short queue in front of the counters, the check-in formalities were soon completed and we made our way through the security checks.
After some refreshments, we boarded the plane and were delighted to find it only about 25% occupied. I suppose most people who travel for pleasure around this time of year do so over Christmas and New Year. Few people are going anywhere in the second week of January, except for business travellers. This is clearly the time to travel.
With so few passengers and so little luggage to get on board, our plane managed to leave the gate ten minutes early. A strong tailwind meant that our flying time was just 5h 57m, possibly the fastest crossing I’ve ever made.
Eloïse sat through Jungle Book 2 in its entirety and seemed enthralled by it. After watching a film, I laid down across the four seats at my disposal, made a nice pile of four pillows and went to sleep for a couple of hours. Sarah stayed next to Eloïse, when she really should have moved across the aisle and lain down. Consequently, she hardly slept at all, which was a great pity, as this was such an easy flight to stretch out on.
When we touched down in Amsterdam, we were a full hour ahead of schedule and arrived at a blissfully smoke-free Schiphol. At last!
It took just seconds to pass through passport control. As we emerged on the other side, our bags were the first ones to come out on the conveyor belt. All four bags came out in a row.
The green customs channel was unmanned, so we strolled through it, out of the building and straight to a taxi large enough to accommodate all of our bags and child items.
In spite of the Monday morning rush hour, we got to our front door just a few minutes after the time we had actually been scheduled to land. All in all, this was almost certainly the easiest, most relaxed flight we’ve ever taken. What a relief.
After turning on the floor heating and grabbing a few hours of sleep, we rushed to get Eloïse ready for peuterspeelzaal and then went to Bagels & Beans for lunch. Afterwards, I started working my way through the large pile of post and then went to the supermarket to buy in supplies.
It’s good to be back. I feel as if we were gone for ages, when, in reality, it was really just a little more than three weeks. It must be my sympathetic nesting instinct coming to the fore.