Schipol

Schipol airport. It's a nice airport, nice shops, cafes, restaurants. I guess we'll get to know it fairly well since we'll be spending the next 8 hours here. The flight out of Memphis was delayed by about 90 minutes, making us miss our connection to Birmingham. The next flight out of Schipol isn't till 21:05. We then had planned to take a combination of bus and train to Leicester. Originally I was hoping to check in by about 16:00. Because our new late arrival we'll miss the last train out of Birmingham. So our options are to either spend the night in Birmingham or hire a car to drive us to Leicester. I guess we'll opt for the latter. Which likely means a larger expense over the train as well as a really late arrival (midnight or later).

This is the second time NW has done this to us. Maybe this is a common occurrence. They certainly seem to be prepared for it, judging by the number of rebooking counters and automated kiosks. It was fairly easy to get new boarding passes printed so at least that aspect was relatively painless. But that still doesn't help with the remainder of the screw up. The whole day is pretty much ruined as a result. I mean I like Schipol, but not enough to spend 8 hours here. A hop out to Amsterdam downtown? To find a coffee shop there perhaps? We did that last time but I don't think we're game this time around. Six hours to go...