Hunt for Westvleteren

Woke up and headed downtown to rent bikes. We got these little coaster brake city bikes -- cheap, crappy, but fun and easy to ride. Did some errands and settled down in the early afternoon at Blue Bird Cafe to hang out, drink coffee and smoke a little weed. I decided to check on our plane flight back to Iceland, because I wasn't exactly sure when it was.

Well, as it turned out, the flight had already left the Amsterdam airport, and we weren't on it. That's depressing. Both Neil and I thought we had at least one more day! (Tim is staying at least another few weeks.)

We looked online. There is one more flight leaving today to Iceland. Our connection is in the morning... we can probably make it. We just have to get on that flight. I guess let's head to the airport and beg them for a ticket.

We got on our bikes and biked back to the hotel to wrap the beer up. We took the whole wooden crate with all the beers and put it into the suitcase. We used newspaper to secure the bottles into the crate. Then we put our extra clothes in between the bottles, so they wouldn't clink together. Then we wrapped the crate and beers in a whole roll of saran wrap, as tight as we could. Finally we tore up a giant cardboard box and used it essentially as packing peanuts, to fill between the crate and the suitcase. Whew! This was a really solid packing job -- we weren't worried about anything breaking. (Nothing did.)

To the airport. We needed to return our bikes, so we had the taxi driver throw both bikes into the back of the taxi -- he had a minivan -- and take the three of us to Centraal Station, where we left Tim and the bikes. Tim returned our bikes for us and the taxi continued on to the airport. On the way the driver started talking to us about all the crazy stuff he did in Amsterdam, including smoking 4 grams a day of weed -- that's an insane amount.

The guy behind the desk gave us two options: charge us €600 each -- €100 to change the ticket and €500 to upgrade us to first class for the flight tonight; or like €1200 total for a new itinerary back to Boston on Tuesday. We wanted to stay two more days, but that price difference was pretty huge, so we decided to go on first class today. He started to make the change, then was interrupted when two economy seats just opened up on the same flight tonight. Obviously that became the best option, because now it was just €100 to change the flight and we're done.

OK! Great! We're on a flight home. We still have a 10-hour overnight layover in Iceland, which is long enough to be very annoying but not long enough to get a good night's sleep in a hotel. So we decide to stay in the airport. We get good food at the airport cafe, Kaffitar, and talk about business, and try to get some sleep. Finally our plane comes and we take off to Boston. And that's the end of my story.