Travel days exist in their own strange dimension.
Time stretches. Gates change. Beer tastes different at 35,000 feet. You eat ravioli at what your body insists is 2 AM and suddenly find yourself discussing geography somewhere over the Canadian Arctic.
Our adventure began, as so many do, in the Delta Lounge. Plenty of space, good food, comfortable chairs — and one tragedy: the beer tap was down. Only Blue Moon remained, available for the bargain price of five dollars. Not ideal for someone accustomed to giant Pacific Northwest IPAs, but sacrifices must be made in the pursuit of international travel. Aimee opted for a Sinatra Smash. Good choice.
Eventually we left the lounge a little too early, only to discover our gate had changed from A4 to S16 — triggering an impromptu episode of The Amazing Race. We hustled across the airport, convinced we were moments from boarding.
Instead: a 2.5-hour delay. Naturally. Back to the lounge we went — a different one this time, older but bigger, and blessedly equipped with complimentary Lagunitas IPA. Things were looking up.
The gate-change sprint from A4 to S16 is the trip's opening bookend. Nine days later, at Heathrow, a closed station will send us scrambling in the opposite direction — east, in order to go west — only to land on the exact same train we would have caught anyway. The trip begins running through an airport and ends running for a train. Some rhythms just repeat.
Eventually we boarded and discovered one of travel's greatest gifts: an entire row to ourselves. Immediately, the trip improved by approximately 30%.
I settled in with a SweetWater 420 Pale Ale and started Project Hail Mary. Somewhere over northern Canada, while eating mushroom ravioli and contemplating the economics of Haribo gummy bears, I decided travel may simply be the art of existing comfortably in strange circumstances. Meanwhile, Aimee was watching Twisters. At one point we crossed over Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands, slowly making our way toward Europe.
Amsterdam sits at roughly 52° north latitude — nearly level with Edmonton, Alberta, and well north of the entire contiguous United States. In July, that means the sun doesn't set until after 10 PM, with a long violet dusk trailing behind it. I'd only ever visited in winter before, when the same latitude delivers the opposite gift: darkness by four in the afternoon. Same city, two completely different relationships with the sun.
After customs — made considerably less stressful by the AirTags confirming our luggage had also successfully crossed the Atlantic — we boarded the train into the city. Garmin Pay worked perfectly. The Dutch continue to impress. A short ride later we emerged from Amsterdam Centraal Station and walked straight into summer: canals, cyclists, boats, people everywhere. The city felt alive.
We made the walk down through the center taking it all in, and arrived at our hotel — the Sofitel Legend The Grand — tired and glad to be there.
The Grand occupies a site that has been in continuous use for over six centuries. It began in 1411 as two adjoining convents — St. Cecilia's and St. Catherine's. After the Protestant Reformation reached Amsterdam in 1578, the buildings were confiscated by the city and repurposed as lodging for visiting royalty, then as headquarters for the Admiralty, and eventually as Amsterdam's City Hall, a role it held — with interruptions for Napoleon and the Nazi occupation — for nearly two centuries. It became a hotel only in 1992. If the walls could talk, they'd never stop. (More on the tour in Day 03.)
The room was ready and lovely, looking out over the courtyard. Welcome to Amsterdam.
After cleaning up, we went out for a quick bite in the courtyard bar and my first proper Amsterdam IPA, then wandered the canals around the hotel. Within a few hours we'd already found two geocaches, walked miles, admired an implausible number of bicycles, and wondered how every building stays standing while leaning at such improbable angles. The hotel itself is full of art — including, unexpectedly, an autographed Guns N' Roses book signed by Slash during a 2017 stay.
Slash's signature in a hotel display case is the first of two signed rock-and-roll artifacts this trip will quietly turn up. The second waits in London, hanging next to a towel rail in Chelsea — an original Robert Whitaker photograph of John Lennon, inscribed to our host. The trip is bracketed, it turns out, by two pieces of music history hiding in plain sight.
After being awake for well over twenty-four hours, exhaustion finally caught us, and we went down for a bit — asleep before the evening was even properly dark. But not for long. Around 1 AM the courtyard below erupted: a crowd had gathered to watch England beat Norway in extra time, and the noise pulled us straight out of sleep. We surfaced just in time to catch the end of the match through the hotel window, on a big Saturday night with Amsterdam still going strong outside. The last thing I remember thinking before drifting back off: I've only been here a few hours, and already this city feels different.
England 2, Norway 1 (a.e.t.) — caught half-asleep through a hotel window at 1 AM, jolted awake by the roar of the courtyard crowd below. England advance, which means we'll be in London for the semifinal on Wednesday. The tournament has quietly attached itself to the trip on night one, and it won't let go until somewhere over Greenland nine days from now.
The Roundup · Day 01
🍺 Beer of the Day. SweetWater 420 Pale Ale at 37,000 feet — not a big-dog IPA, but it got me there — with an honorable mention to the complimentary lounge Lagunitas IPA that rescued the delay.
🌍 What I Learned Today. Amsterdam sits farther north than I'd ever registered. A city I only knew in winter darkness turns out to have endless violet summer evenings.
🎵 Song of the Day. "Three Little Birds" — Bob Marley, downloaded for the flight. Every little thing is gonna be all right.
❤️ Moment I'll Remember. Stepping out of Centraal Station into the warm evening air and seeing Amsterdam unfold in front of us for the first time in twenty-five years — and in summer, for the first time ever.