2018 – Part 74 – Australia to Canada via Europe
I freely admit that this route to Australia is not what comes to mind to North Americans, when you say you are flying to Australia. For most people the route is westbound across the Pacific. In our case, routing through Europe gave us the chance to do two things during our stopover.
Amsterdam Stopover
Stopovers can be helpful to explore a place between flights, provided you have enough time to leave the airport and get a sample of what the city and country holds. On our return leg, we made the deliberate choice to have a short stopover, for us it worked out to be about 34 hours. Although we wanted to have have more time, this trip was all about heading to Australia and New Zealand, and getting to leave the airport in Amsterdam was the reward for all the extra time we spent on planes for this trip. We had two goals for this stopover. The first was to,
Visit family!
The upside to flying through Amsterdam is that I have relatives who live just a few hours away in Germany. Once we arrived at the car rental counter and once offered the chance to not drive a VW Golf (or maybe a Polo), I gladly accepted the offer to upgrade into something more comfortable and spacious:
With our luggage safely stored in the trunk, and the GPS speaking to us in English, we started our 2 hour drive. They have always been accommodating in letting us visit regardless of its duration. This one though would set the shortest visit. Saturday morning traffic was comfortable, and once in Germany I did let the Jag stretch its legs. Warm spring weather had arrived in Northern Europe and most of our visit was spent outside to take in the fresh air and enjoy the company. (And yes we finally enjoyed the wine that travelled with us throughout the whole trip)
Tea upon arrival
Feast outside on the patio
Just as quickly as we had arrived, we departed the following morning back to Schiphol. Depending on traffic there might be time for one more thing we wanted to do before leaving Europe. Initially the drive was easy-going — I didn’t know a convertible SUV was an option:
Faster than I wanted, the German autobahn came to its end entering the Netherlands. This slow moving traffic started to put our plans into jeopardy.
Fortunately the traffic picked up pace soon enough. We arrived back at Schiphol where we returned the vehicle, dropped off our checked luggage and looked at the time — we should make it!
We got on the train and headed to the central station to have a late lunch of DIM SUM!
Dim Sum
That’s right! We returned to the Sea Palace for Dim Sum. Same place we visited during our 8 hour stopover when we were headed eastbound to Australia.
While we enjoyed our final meal before our flight I took in the sights:
Ducks on a building
Opposite Sea Palace
Bride selfie on a boat!
Vintage aircraft with a chaser plane
Filled with our Dim Sum choices we headed back to the airport for our final leg of the journey home. Our Amsterdam Stopover was a success!
Read more about our trip by clicking here.