On to Doha

 After a fantastic but all too short reunion with my relatives in the Netherlands, today we leave Europe and go to Qatar for a warm up. So far our daily average has been around 10-15 C and for the first time since we docked in Amsterdam it wasn't raining. We were going to go to the Waterloo Cafe for Breakfast but even though they said they opened at 9AM, they still looked very closed at 9:10 AM. We settled for another cafe around the corner for a croissant and coffee.  I think we should have waited for the Waterloo to open. The coffee was OK but the Croissant was microwaved and soggy. On the way back we passed a couple of clown cars, little single seat EVs. You can almost hear them squeak when they move! 


We strolled back to the hotel and prepared for our transfer to Schipol Airport. Our driver arrived around 11:20 AM and with bags in hand we were on our way to the airport. At one stage traffic was reduced from 4 to 1 lane because of an accident It didn't take long until we were fighting for a spot to set down at the international terminal. The airport was insanely busy and our check in area was covered by repair work making it difficult to find. Once we had checked in it was then, follow the crowd through immigration and security until we could get to our departure gate.


We could now settle in and wait for our plane. We had a lunchtime snack at a Jamie Oliver cafe and aside from the slow service, the food was pretty good. Sitting in the departure lounge we came across our friends from the cruise George and Frances. After a quick catch up we were called to board and that is where  things started to slow down. We waited in a boarding queue for what seemed an eternity and eventually boarded and found our seats near the rear of the plane. We had been sitting and waiting for a while when the captain announced we are delayed because we  were put in a later slot . It was almost an hour waiting for the call up and we were soon on our way We had the 2 middle seats on the centre block of four. Ann had a guy on her left who wanted to take up some of her seat as well, and I had an Asian girl sitting next to me who kept putting her pillow and blanket in my foot well. We always seem to pick them!

Three movies later we touched down in Doha, making up 3 minutes of lost time, but still behind schedule. There were not many people from our flight staying in Doha and we thought we would be lucky when it came to immigration and baggage claim. How wrong was I! we were following the signs to baggage claim and one sign said it was 18 minutes away. Anther sign said 6 minutes if we took the train!. We waited a further 3 minutes for the train and were taken directly to the immigration and baggage claim. Aside from the huge crowd going through immigration  we got through fairly quickly and collected our luggage. A quick scan at Customs and we were out the door and looking for our driver. 



We went to the Discover Qatar counter and they had our details and took us straight out to the car. Thew rest of the trip was pretty straightforward and after having a shower to freshen up it was off to bed.  Our room at the Horizon Manor hotel is somewhat larger then the one we had at the Eden Hotel. In fact our bed is bigger than the room we had there! We are on the 7th floor and there is a nightclub on the 14th floor. We could hear the doof doof music but we were so stuffed it didn't matter. It seemed to stop around 2AM, and we both slept solidly until 9AM later that morning.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rudesheim

Image
 Our Journey is nearing the end and today we wake to the sounds of ducks, geese and trains. We have docked in Rudesheim, a small town on the Rhine. It is home to Sigfried's musicial cabinet, a small museum dedicated to a collection of mechanical musical instruments. There are over 350 exhibits in the museum which is a house built for a nobleman in 1542. Many of the pieces were painstakingly rebuilt by Sigfried before his death in 2016. The engineering and craftsmanship in these pieces of equipment are astounding. Rudesheim is also home to Rudesheimer coffee. This is coffee with Brandy on 3 cubes of sugar. The alcohol is burned off while the brandy is stirred to dissolve the sugar. The brewed coffee is then poured in and topped off with whipped cream.  It is a little expensive compared to a normal coffee but one has to try the experience. As we were finishing our coffee a group of Chinese tourists came  to the coffee shop. They only wanted to use the toilets and created a ...
Read more

Amsterdam Part 2

Image
 We left the Travel Marvel Vega this morning around 10 AM and after a short drive in a Mercedes mini bus we arrived at our lodgings, The Eden Hotel in the centre of Amsterdam. We went in to check in and it was a kind of self-serve affair. When we got to the end of the check in it wanted us to pay for the accommodation, which had already been paid by the travel agent. We had  to get the concierge to find out what was going on and eventually we got the key cards for the room and made our way there to settle in.  I can tell you nothing is cheap in Europe. our Room for 2 nights is 381 Euro or about $622 AUD. The room is about half the size of the room we had on the Vega and the entire bathroom is about the size of the shower cubicle we had. We did have a window with a great view of the building next door. I guess we are paying for the ambience as it is on the Amstel water front. It is also close to some good restaurants and the metro station. We decided to go for a walk and t...
Read more

Familie Ties

Image
 My mother was born in Batavia (Java) to Dutch parents. Although she never lived here we do have some family ties in the Netherlands. Staying in Amsterdam we had to at least try and catch up with some family. We didn't have a great deal of spare time, but the time we did have we spent with one of my uncles and my cousin and her family. I had met them before when they came to Australia but that was over 15 years ago and memories do fade slightly on appearances. Anouk (my cousin) was my first point of contact through facebook and as she didn't use it often it took a while to get a response. I was excited to get a response and more so that we were able to work out a time to catch up. She also contacted my uncle Frans who was also going to meet up with us.  Anouk had planned a day at Kasteel de Haar , a beautifully renovated castle dating back to the 13th century. She has also given us some travel plans to get from Amsterdam to Bruekelen. Ann and I had already done a test walk to ...
Read more