At last, we made our dream come true. Yes… We had plan to visit Europe since the day we married. 1998…so it was after 16 long years we finally made it. Just like our previous trip to Canada, several people played important parts in realizing this trip. Without their help and support, we could not plan this long journey.
We had visited 9 countries and 14 cities. Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia, Germany, Italia, Switzerland, France. Spain, and Turkey…. Of course there are still many beautiful cities we left behind. We hope we can visit them on our next trip to Europe. Regarding the cities, we spent more days in Netherlands because we need to visit our friends in Utrecht and Leiden. Other Netherlands cities which included in our trip were Keukenhoff, Den Haag, Delft, Scheveningen, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam.
For other countries we just visited one city; Vienna in Austria, Bratislava in Slovakia, Munich in Germany, Venice in Italia, Basel in Switzerland, Paris in France, Barcelona in Spain, and Istanbul in Turkey.
For most of the cities, on average we spent 3 days and 2 nights with the exception in Netherlands cities. Let us look at the detail of our notes…..
We started this trip from Bandung on May 5. We left Bandung at 12 am and reach Jakarta at around 4 pm. Yes, we intentionally chose to arrive early. Our flight to Istanbul departed at 8 pm. We had plenty of time to rest and preparing our check in. In fact, we’d already checked in thru online system.
Skip the story to 7 pm when we stand in front of the passport check. Since there were not many passangers, we can go throu the imigration in no time. We waited for the plane to be ready. Unfortunately, we experience delays for almost an hour. The boarding started at 8.30 pm and finally the plane starting to move to the runway at 9 pm.
Without any difficulties, the plane took off smoothly and we enjoyed our flight to Istanbul. Our final destination was Amsterdam. We will stopover for 2 hours in Istanbul but with this delay, I was not sure we still have enough time. Yet, we were confidence that everything will be arranged by Turkish Airlines.
The flight to Istanbul took 13 hours. So we just sit back and relax. Turkish Airlines provide 2 meals, one right after we took off and one just before we landed. I heard that Turkish Airlines had the best in flight food. As far as I was concern, I did not agree with that. I found that the food is quite regular and the taste quite plain. Once again, this is my opinion. But, we enjoy the meals anyway….
Just like my prediction… Our arrival time in Istanbul was at around 6 am so we only have an hour to catch our connecting flight to Amsterdam. Of course we rushed to the transfer terminal and… We need to clear the immigration. It was quite stressful to see the long line of passangers in the immigration. We chose one line that did not look too long and went pass thru it in 15 minutes. Then… We walk but almost run to the designated gate. Just before 7 am, we reached the gate and it turned out we still have time…
This connecting flight to Amsterdam finally took off at around 7.15 am. Smooth take off and flightbfor the whole 3 hours duration… We reached Schipol Airport in Amsterdam at 10 am. The date was May 6 and the weather was very good… We went pass immigration in just a couple of minutes and pick up our baggages… And while I was waiting for my wife I can connect to the airport wifi and knew that Liverpool will played in the Europa League Final.
Our next move was to scan the situation and chose the right transportation mode to Utrecht. We will visited Visca, our friend from Unpar. The train in Netherlands was so easy and usually on schedule. We will discuss our trip in Netherlands on our next posts………