Final Days

Dutch is a combo of English, German, etc. And you can make up your own Dutch by adding an "en" or "er" and removing articles, for example: Some one is stoned and not moving any time soon, in Dutch you would say, "Oh, they're farfrommovin'." Or you are wathing people from the window of a cafe: You are just "sittinanstarin" Or people have stopped right in front of you and are not moving anytime soon, they are "blockenthepathen". You get it.

Amsterdam Airport
Our taxi driver was hilarious to the airport, we got in the cab and he said, "Hey sir, didn't I drive you to the red light whores?" and I said, "What?" and he said, "Just kidding, just kidding" at 4:30 am. He told us a story about that joke and how he told it to another couple and the wife had a fit, because the husband did got and get a prostitute and the wife found out and the husband was in deep doodoo.

So we checked our bags at the airport and Kirsten's bag was over the weight limit so we had to pay extra four the poundage but they don't use pounds for weight they use kilos so when Kirsten asked me "how much", I said 25 pounds meaning the price we'll have to pay but she thought I meant 25 pounds over the limit so it became an Abbot and Costello routine where we are saying what we mean to say and the other doesn't understand our meaning.

Then came the first of our many adventures in security: The Netherlands decided to pat me down completely from bald spot to crotch shot to check whatever they were looking for. Then when we got to our long flight from London to O'Hare, we were exhausted. At O'Hare we had to check into the country, remove our bags, go through customs, and more or less get stripped searched to reenter the country, recheck our bags and then mad dash to our flight to St. Louis all in an hour in 10 minutes because we sat on the tarmack at Heathrow for so long in London. We ran to our gate and got there in plenty of time come to find out.

As we flew over Illinois and across the Mississippi we saw the Arch from our plane and Kirsten said, "Well it's not Big Ben." and I said, "Yeah, but it's home." although the vacation was way too short, it is great to be home again. But what's up with this weather? We wore jackets almost every day in Europe and here it is 90 plus.

Best thing we did for this trip was buy two batteries for the camera.
Worst thing I did for the trip was as always, over pack.