— LAX

The flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Heathrow (LHR) was late into LAX; this started my trip on a wonderful note.

The screaming baby, also great.

— London

Now, last year, I booked a one hour window through Heathrow, a huge mistake since heathrow is gigantic and you have to go through security twice; I vowed to never let that happen again, so this time, I booked a three hour window, which as it turns out was necessary.

The plane arrived two and half hours late, so I had less than 30 minutes to blow through security (tips below) get to the duty free and register at the gate. Fine, I can handle a truncated visit to the shopping mall after that flight.

— Amsterdam

Probably the best airport in the world, from it, you can do your shopping, take a train anywhere into europe, including a 2h 40m trip on the TGV (Thalys) to Paris.

Everything is the same price here as it is anywhere in Holland, maybe a 1 euro more than a common store.

So I get through immigration, and the border controls and get out to the baggage claim.

The belt starts up, less than 15 minutes after the plane arrived, vomits out a bunch of luggage which is promptly collected by the other passengers, and shuts off.

Now that of course, would have been great, except that mine wasn’t on it. A quick check with the baggage handler indicated that it was still in London and was promised to be on the next flight, 2 hours later.

After spending an hour looking for my uncle in the “mall” at schiphol, I finally found his phone number in the address book of my old phone, called him and met up with him.

True to their word,  my baggage arrived on the next flight.

— Hilversum

Train and Taxi back to Hilversum, a total €13.