Flying: Home to Detroit to Amsterdam

First of all, let this be a considerable warning to all of you who may ever need to fly up to 3 or more planes back-to-back: IT IS A MOST UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCE.

Flight #1 up to Detroit was okay. Domestic flight, about two hours, people do that all the time, not a big deal.

The Detroit airport is pretty nifty, let me tell you. It has a variety of points of interest... such as the trippy statue-like fountain, the trippy long, psychedelically-colored underground tunnel that connects to the international concourse and loudly hums ambient sounds at you while you feel like you're in a subway in Wonderland, and the indoor monorail, which ends up being kind of trippy in itself. Everyone walking around in the airport blinks and looks up when they hear a quiet whooshing noise, only to discover that there's a bloody full-sized modern train floating by just overhead. I'd post pictures of all of these, but they'll be some video that I took.

Then comes the international Flight #2. As I sit at the gate to Amsterdam, I look around and start playing a game with myself, trying to figure out who is American and who isn't. You know you're getting close to international travel when the people boarding the next flight with you are no longer largely from the U.S.

Summary of the international flight: Listened to a German family of two parents and three kids talking to each other, played with the personal TV screen, watched The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (!) in English, watched 101 Dalmations in German, miserably failed multiple attempts to get comfortable sleep, and tried not to curl into a ball in the middle of the aisle when the descent into Amsterdam made my right ear feel like it was going to burst with the enormous pressure and slather the German man next to me in brain jam.

  

But wow, that all sounds so very negative. It really wasn't terrible. I was just really tired when I finally got off in Amsterdam. This was probably due to several factors: I had gotten very little sleep in the past few days, sleep on the flight didn't really happen, and it was not only about 5:40 AM in Amsterdam when I got there, but in US Central time, that's close to when I would be getting ready to go to bed.