Dec 8, 2024 3 min read Honeymoon Updates!

DAY 1 - TRAVEL/EMBARKATION

Wow what a morning. We woke up to the notification our incoming flight had been delayed twice, and was now going to have our flight arrive in Philadelphia right after our flight to

departed. Sooooooo that wasn't gonna work.

We were initially worried that we wouldn't get up very quickly last night, but this got us out of bed for sure. We were able to rebook to a new flight that connected with our original flight to

BUT it left 3 hours earlier.

Cue us trying to figure out how to get to the airport at 6:30 AM, texting friends to see if they're awake, asking parents to drive (but it was too far).

In the end we devised a plan to drive *ourselves* to the airport, park in short term parking, then have my [Nick's] parents pick up the car at SFO and drive it home.

It ***worked*** and we are forever grateful (but already in debt anyways) to mum n dad. Also S.O. to friends that we contacted way earlier than should have been allowed for a Saturday morning.

After getting ourselves to SFO we had to RUN through the parking garage and terminal to check our bags (which the kind gate agent didn't charge us for!), and made it to the gate with 10 minutes to spare.

And that seemed to be the theme for the remaining flights of the day. Short layover in PHX then flight to Philly just in time to make our connecting flight to

Another snafu in the day was that in getting our flights rebooked that morning, our seats for the philly to

[I think you get the picture] flight were pushed back from ~premium economy~ to just economy :/ not ideal, and not something any of the gate agents at any of the airport could help with, so we flew economy over the Atlantic and will have to get a refund from American for the ticket difference at a later date

Lauren slept as good as she could on the final flight, and Nick slept about 10% as good as he could have.

Upon arrival in Amsterdam, we made our way through customs (after trying three different restrooms to find one in working order), then found our way to our bus transfer to the boat (Our transfer representative said she was expecting a much older couple, but was glad she didn't have to walk so slow to guide us to the bus).

We arrived on the boat and confirmed almost everyone else on the boat was much older (average age is around 55, and we are bringing the average down.) After checking into our room, we made our way off the boat and explored [ah heck, one more time]