Day 6:  Huizen to Utrecht via the De Nassau.   And then -all the way home.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this trip wasn’t our first choice but it was the closest match to our flight dates.  

Today was the last day of biking for the tour.  Those riding their bikes would find the ship waiting for them in Utrecht.. The official end of the tour would be after breakfast the next morning.  

However, our schedule had to be a bit different.  We had train tickets booked that afternoon going back to Frankfurt leaving at 4 PM because our flight home was early the next morning.  Our original plan was to ride our bikes, arrive at the ship, get showers and finish packing before heading to the train station -but the Captain wasn’t certain about the ship’s arrival time.  We began to doubt whether or not we could ride and have the timing work out, so we decided to take the day off and stay on the ship.

My first order of business was to get my “Shut Up Legs” picture, which I take at the end of every bike trip we do.  This is a famous quote from Jens Voight when he was a Tour de France rider.  

Before long, the ship was leaving Huizen.

The harbor entrance.

Looking back into the harbor at Huizen.

For the first half of the trip back to Utrecht, the ship was in an area of bigger water, not a canal or river.  After a couple of hours of churning along, we “turned left” to enter the main shipping canal that would get us to Utrecht.  If we’d “turned right” we would have entered a much bigger area of open water that ultimately would have taken us to the North Sea.

Below is a picture of the main salon -where we had our breakfasts and dinners.    

The sun deck above the main salon was quite spacious.  It was a bit too chilly to be up there most days, unfortunately.  

We went through one lock and after that it was clear cruising to Utrecht.

For most of the trip, we were focused on showering and final packing -plus a bit of doing nothing.  It was a gloomy day and a bit too chilly for to be up on the sun deck to enjoy the scenery along the way.  I did step out now and then in hopes of a photo opportunity!

The ship arrived in Utrecht at 2:30. We were already showered and packed by then.  It was a good call to stay on board instead of riding.  We asked the guide to help us get a taxi to the train station -and the taxi didn’t arrive until around 3:00 PM.  In the flurry to figure out where the taxi might actually pick us up (there were two possibilities), we ended up hopping into the cab when it arrived and left the De Nassau without a second glance.

Because we knew we’d probably be leaving before those who’d biked that day arrived at the ship, we had said our farewells to our dinner partners the night before.  At the beginning of the trip, I’d said that I felt bad for them being stuck with us for the whole week -considering the language barrier, and …well…have you met us?  HAH.  But as we’d parted after dinner the night before, Valerie said she was very glad to have spent the week sitting with us because she thought the language barrier would have been more difficult for them if they’d been seated at a table with only German-speaking passengers.  In fact, I was further surprised when they asked us to meet them the next morning at breakfast.  Up to that point, we’d never seen them at breakfast because we went first thing and they didn’t.  We made sure to see them at breakfast that morning and waved goodbye as they left on their bikes.

The long trip home begins:

It was only a short taxi ride to the train station, but the driver pulled up to an area we hadn’t seen before and indicated that we’d arrived.  We were a bit bewildered because there was nothing we could see that indicated a train station was there.  But, we figured he knew what he was doing -so we stepped out of the taxi and started looking for clues about where to go next.

I noticed a small convenience store/shop off to the side, so I told Mike I’d grab us some cold drinks and a snack.  We hadn’t had any lunch and would be on the train between 4:00 and 9:00 PM -so I wanted to make sure we had something to eat with us in case the train’s cafe car didn’t have something we wanted.  

As I was just finishing up my purchase, a text from Mike popped up:  HURRY!  We still have a 30 minute walk to the train station!  WHAT???  I was back outside in moments.  I refused to believe that the taxi driver had scammed us.  I don’t know what Mike had Googled to get that info…so there was a “meeting of the minds” where I suggested that we make sure we knew exactly where we were before dashing off on a wild goose chase.  We took a good look around us. There were some nondescript looking buildings nearby and a gigantic staircase (up) -I swear it was like two stories up. I noticed there was an elevator off to the side of the steps..whew!  I told Mike, Let’s go up there and see what’s there and if it isn’t the train station, we’ll GPS ourselves to wherever the station is.” Thank goodness for the elevator! 

I was able to snag this picture from the internet.  It is almost as if whoever took this was standing in the spot where the taxi dropped us off.  The convenience store was in the building to the left side of the stairs.

At the top, we arrived at a large plaza leading to the entrance of the train station! I think the taxi had dropped us off on the “back side” of it.  When we’d arrived in Utrecht, we’d walked out the “front side” of it.

If you remember our experience in catching our train to Utrecht from Frankfurt, well prepare to laugh at us again!  By the time we got into the station, we still had about 30 minutes until our train departed.  We went down to the track and found a bench for the wait.  

In Europe, the electronic information signs for each track will often show a diagram of the arriving train’s coach line up with a corresponding letter of the alphabet by each coach.  Spaced along the platform are simple lit up letters of the alphabet.  Basically it helps you figure out where to stand to board your coach.  We saw our diagram displayed and walked quite a ways down the platform to the appropriate area to wait.  About 10 minutes before the train was to arrive, we saw another diagram that said our coach would be at the OPPOSITE end of the platform from where we now were… so we traipsed all the way back down the platform to wait in the area of the new “letter”.  

The train arrived and …much to our annoyance… it turns out that our coach was actually going to stop near the the original area we’d been waiting at and now (deja vu) we were at the wrong end of the train. SIGH.  

So, once again, we boarded at the last coach on the train and had to walk all the way to the front of the train for our seats.  We were like two salmon trying to swim upstream as passengers in the cars we needed to pass through were busy finding their own seats and clogging up the aisles.  The aisles are very narrow on those trains and if someone was headed toward us, it turned into a game of chicken to see who could find enough space to move out of the way first -while juggling luggage and sometimes small children!

The rest of the trip to Frankfurt was uneventful.  Our hotel was at the airport and steps from the train station.  In the morning, it was going to be an easy walk to our departing terminal.  After we checked into the hotel, Mike wanted to take the time to walk through the terminal to make sure we knew how long it would take the next morning…which we did, as far as the point where we’d need to board a tram for the bit of our trip to our terminal.

The next morning, we retraced our steps to the tram stop and were whisked to Terminal 1.  As we were arriving at the terminal, Mike said he could see Delta’s check-in desks through the tram window.  When we walked off the tram, I paused, trying to take time to get my bearings, but Mike was being impatient and saying… Come on!  It is right down there.  So we went down an escalator and the first thing I saw on my right was a sign that said “Sky Priority” -which I immediately assumed meant we’d arrived at the check-in desks.  I turned to step into the line.

A laughing voice behind me said…. “Are you going to China?”  What?… and I looked up to see that we were at a China Airlines desk.  The Sky Priority sign was the only thing written in English!  Mike thought this was hysterical and pointed to the other side of the huge open hall to where the Delta check-in actually was.  

One of the reasons he thought it was so funny is because I’ve told him a story about getting home from school when I was young, running in the door and yelling:  “Mom!  Where are you?”  I’d hear a voice from somewhere in the house saying… I’ve gone to China, the same place I go every day this time of day.  And now, Mike says, his wife is “gone to China” too.

Our last “fun” moment of the departure was arriving at the security area for our gates and ending up in secondary screening.  Let me just say that the woman who did my screening should have bought me a drink first!  After she said I could go, I turned to give Mike a “can you believe I had to have secondary screening?” look, and I saw that he, too, was being sent to have a secondary screening.  His experience was also quite up close and personal!

Our flight leaving Frankfurt was delayed (daventure!), and arrived in Atlanta about an hour before our next flight was scheduled to depart.  Although this stressed us out, we were able to make record time exiting the plane, getting through immigration (thanks to Global Entry), grabbing our luggage at the luggage carousel and rechecking it, and then getting through the TSA line faster than expected because it wasn’t as busy as usual.  Next, it was a dash down the escalator to the Plane Train to go from Terminal E to Terminal B… back up the escalator and the Kentucky Derby run to the gate. Of course our gate was nearly all the way to the end of Terminal B.  It might have been more like Roller Derby since we had to dodge and weave through the other passengers who were obviously not in a hurry!   We’d already gotten the text saying the flight was boarding, followed up a bit later with the news that our zone was now boarding.  They were just finishing up boarding our zone when we rushed up, scanned our boarding passes and hit the jetway.  We’d made it!  There were several more zones to board before the departure, so we’d made it with time to spare. All we had left to worry about was whether or not our luggage would make the flight too.  Just before they closed the door in preparation for departure, we got texts from Delta informing us that our bags were on the plane!  Whew!  

And finally… Home again….   Until the next trip, of course!

Categories: Part 8 -The Beginning of the End