A Second Visit to Amsterdam

Erin’s parents came to see us over Christmas. This is their second trip to Amsterdam, so things were a little less rushed since they’d already been here before. It was nice to have some family in town on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In true Rogers fashion, we neglected to actually check the service times on Sunday for the Christmas Eve services at church. Nevermind that Erin is on staff at the church and has been involved in numerous meetings outlining the goings-on for Christmas Eve. We decided to go to the 8:30 p.m. service after enjoying our dinner. At about 7:55 Erin found a schedule of the service times and noted that the service actually started at 8:00. We left immediately, thinking we would only be about 10 or 15 minutes late. After arriving closer to 20 minutes late, we found that the doors to the auditorium were closed and the men standing by the door were explaining that the room was at capacity and it would be a fire hazard to let anymore people in. We guess the 8:00 service just wasn’t meant to be. We decided to drive back to the apartment, open gifts, have something warm to drink and come back for the 10:00 service. Everything turned out OK in the end. John was just a bit sad after hearing that there was indeed a false fire alarm during the 8:00 service and everyone had to exit the building; he hates to miss chaos! There was no chaos at the 10:00 service.

The day after Christmas, 2 Kerstdag in the Netherlands and Boxing Day in the U.K., the four of us left to fly to London for the remainder of the week. Erin’s mom had purchased tickets ahead of time for the train that takes us straight from the airport into London, so we were planning to get to our apartment around 2:00 p.m. Alas, the train company decided the week after Christmas would be the best time to do repair work on the tracks. The express train was not running and we had to take coaches instead. What was supposed to be a 30-minute train ride would now take at least 2 hours on the roads. The most memorable part of the trip was the first 30 minutes or so as the heater in the coach was turned on full blast and all of us thought we were going to die of the heat! Finally one woman went to ask the driver if the air conditioning could be turned on and we rode in comfort the rest of the way to Victoria Station.

Upon arriving at Victoria Station, we went to the information desk to see about buying travel cards for the underground. The man waiting on us at the desk was the absolute nastiest, meanest, rudest person we have ever encountered. After getting angry that he was just about to leave when we walked in, he then got angry about our method of payment and the number of cards we were buying, and told us we should just leave London! Fortunately, the transaction got finished and we never met another person that rude the entire rest of the week.

The story of London will have to be chronicled in parts. Let’s face it, we are going to write about our adventures in great detail for our own benefit rather than yours (unless you are planning a trip to London and want tips on what to do). We are aware that many of our readers will just skip the next entries because they could care less what we ate and how many stairs we climbed to get to the top of St. Paul’s. That’s fine. We’ll provide a quick summary for all of you.