Seth is 10 months old!

This post is a little delayed, first because I wanted to finish Netherlands post first, and second, because we are all a little frazzled here. Between jet lag (i.e., Seth waking up at 3 am every morning) and illnesses (Seth got croup over the weekend and now, me and the boys have colds), we have just been worn out. Oh, and our babysitter quit (sigh ...) But since we leave to Ann Arbor tomorrow for Katsu's graduation (yes, we have to fly again already), the time has come. But it'll be a short update.

Seth is everywhere. Basically, he wants to crawl, cruise, climb all the time. Today, he discovered he can walk holding on to his push toy and he is in love! It's so cute to watch and he has really great control over it already. Plus, it keeps him occupied. He is busy, short-attention spanned, and into everything. I think there is only one agenda item for him each day: get everything off or out. Out of the book shelves, out of the cabinets, off the tables, out of the toy baskets, etc. So, I spend the day trying to keep him from getting into Andrew's toys, trying to keep Andrew from hurting Seth, trying to keep him out of important stuff, putting everything away he just got out, and keeping him from pulling the cat's tail or fur. I kind of forgot about this age ... but it's all coming back to me.

Seth still hasn't gotten any more teeth - just the bottom 2. No sign the top ones will come in any time soon. He is looking a little chubbier this month, but he still doesn't weigh a whole lot - just 19 lbs as far as I can gauge. He is a very distracted nurser (frustrating for traveling) and is getting tired with baby food. He likes to feed himself, but still doesn't have a huge repertoire (or appetite or patience). I tried getting him to spoon feed himself, but that was kind of a joke. He hates sitting still, but if he's strapped in with something that goes through his legs and around his belly, he will stay there.

Seth throws a ball! I am pretty impressed. I will play the rolling the ball back and forth, but he will pick it up and throw it to me. He has pretty good aim, too. This seems pretty advanced to me. It's so cute to watch.

Seth is also really good with waving. He is trying to do high five and clap. He babbles a lot and says "Oh", "Mom" and "Dadda" a lot. He might say "Bye" some of the time. He even tried to say amen a few times. Too cute.

He's been pretty happy, though the trip was pretty trying for him. We're having a lot of fun.

The Last Day

I have been postponing writing this, because the last day was just so awful. But here we go ...

We left pretty early, taking the metro and then the train to Schiphol Airport. We left about 5 hours before our flight and got to the airport at least 4 hours before our flight was to depart, maybe more. We figured it would be a little crazy, but we had confirmed seats on a flight later that day. We didn't print boarding passes because we know with lap children on international flights, you have paper tickets and so you have to talk to someone behind the desk.

Things seemed fine as we went from the train station to the airport. We found the gates to check in for our flight ... but the way was blocked off and instead they were directing us outside. So, we had to walk outside and then all the way around to the other end of the checkin area. There was no signs, nothing, just a huge mass of people that I guess you could call a line. A huge amount of people. Thousands upon thousands of people, at least 10 people across slowly, as in grass growing slowly, moving. Everything was total chaos, but the general consensus appeared to be that this was indeed the line to be in. There were a few national Guard type-ish people who told us to just stay in line, that they knew nothing, etc. etc. No one knew anything. It was horrible. We stood and waited and waited and waited. People from business class, regular class, people without tickets, people with tickets, we were all waiting in this line. Occasionally, someone would come and tell anyone with boarding passes to follow them - sadly, not us. The kids started to get very impatient. Seth was crying and wanting to eat. Andrew started crying and saying, "It's too crowded. It's too crowded". We could barely move - think Tokyo subway during rush hour crowded. Finally, Katsu talked to some of the men with berets and convinced them that the kids needed to eat / some space, so they allowed me and the kids to sit on a bench in the blocked off area while Katsu proceeded in line. I was lucky to breastfeed with a captive audience. Occasionally, people came around with bottles of water, chips, etc. There was TV stations filming and everyone was upset. At one point, a fistfight broke out.

The line snaked around. I let Seth crawl around on the dirty airport floor. After probably 2 hours, we finally got back to where the original check-in counter was and the line finally split into people with tickets and people who needed to book. The poor people who needed to book had a huge line that barely moved. The line for people with tickets seemed pretty fast and in short order we got to the electronic check-in screens. We knew we couldn't do self service, so we asked one of the people working for Delta what we should do now. They told us we had to wait in another line. I started to lose it here and told them that wasn't acceptable. I thought they meant we had to go in that other long line we had seen before. I told them we couldn't do that, we had little children, we would surely miss our flight. After a fruitless discussion and talking to other of their supervisor, they said they could do nothing for us. In fact, that couldn't even tell us where the line started, but that we should go in that general direction with the mass of people. We were in this line for at least an hour, probably more. The people in this line were MAD. Most of them were close to or had already missed their flight. It was the most frustrating thing I have ever seen and it moved the slowest I have ever seen. One of the guys next to us kept talking about this was the kind of environment where something bad was just waiting to happen. He told us that if a riot broke out, the safest place to be was up and someone we needed to find a way to climb with our two kids up to the ceiling. Right.

When Katsu was almost to the front, I talked to a few of the employees again. I said our flight was leaving in 45 minutes, would we be able to make it? They doubted it as we had to be on the flight 45 minutes before departure. They said the airlines were losing so much money by not flying planes that if we missed the flight it didn't matter - it was better for the airline to fly half full flights. They would just stick us on the next flight, too bad if it wasn't until tomorrow (which it almost surely would have been). They offered to get Andrew chips, but they never came back with them.

Finally, Katsu got to the front desk. We had waited in line for at least 4 hours. After our lady talked on the phone for a long time, she said we should be able to make the flight. Hallelujah! She said we should only check one bag and we would have to carry-on everything else. She said to take our checked bag to the end of the way and they would take care of it. We took it over there and the man said he would definitely not do anything with it and he had no idea what we were talking about. We finally found a Delta lady who said she would take care of it and we started running. We did passport control in a huge hurry and ran to our gate. Katsu ran ahead. I can only run so well with Seth in a sling and pushing the stroller, but made it there out of breath. Thankfully, we weren't even the last ones!

At this point, we were totally worn out. Katsu had needed to use the bathroom for four hours. It was almost 3 pm and we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast because we had been planning on buying lunch at the airport, but we'd been in line since about 10. The kids were not happy a bit. And we still had a 8 (or maybe more ... I can't remember) hour flight to Detroit. And then a flight from there to St Louis. And get this - because we checked in so late, our seats weren't even together. Katsu was smack dab in the middle of a row, 15 rows in front of the kids for Andrew and me. I didn't want to be in the middle of the row because I knew I would need to breastfeed Seth soon. So, it was me with both kids by myself. Take off was brutal. Seth was fussing and so I was having to nurse him. But Andrew was none too happy (tired, hungry, etc.), so he was pulling my shirt, hitting, biting, etc. Happily, they both fell asleep after the flight took off. After the flight got off, Katsu had convinced his seat mates to switch seats, but by this time, both boys were taking a nap and I didn't want to chance it. They both woke up by dinner service, though, so I was forced to somehow manage eating dinner, getting Andrew to eat dinner, and holding Seth. We actually did pretty good with only some chicken and spinach getting on my shirt and seat and roll crumbs everywhere (from Seth). That was one of those moments were I was thinking - I am a woman, hear me roar!

After dinner, I dropped Seth off in Katsu's seat. He wasn't particularly happy about this - he basically only wants mom, and so he was wailing. Oh, well. Eventually, a few hours into the flight, we did switch seats and we finally were all sitting together. I felt bad about the roll crumbs, but it was worth it to sit together. Seth took another mini-nap I think, but otherwise they were awake. They both fell asleep when the plane landed, so we waited and got off the plane last. Andrew was so completely and totally worn out, that he slept all the way through. Through passport control, getting our bags, customs, security (yes, even getting out of his stroller), waiting for our next flight, getting on our next flight, getting off the next flight, getting our bags, and the taxi ride home. Incredible.

And even more incredible, our checked bag, the one we just left with a Delta attendant who said she would take care of it while we ran off just 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to take off - this bag was waiting for us in St Louis!!! (Well, okay, we had to pick it up in Detroit, take it through customs, and recheck it, but you get the point of it). A miracle.

But we were so glad to be back in the U.S. No more draining our checking account (our balance was $17 when we checked it in Europe before we transferred our emergency fund into the account). No more weird Dutch toilets. No more obnoxious Dutch people who had no idea what they were doing. No more four flights of tiny tiny stairs up to our room. No more 30 minute walk to the train station every day through sand and cobblestone roads. No more eating out of the grocery store or in a restaurant while trying to hold wiggly Seth. No more convincing the kids to be quiet ... in the museum, on the train, on the bus, etc. No more eagerly watching CNN each night to see if the airports were opening again. No more Andrew asking when we would be able to take the plane home and if the cloud was still there.

It was a fun trip (as fun as it can be to travel to Europe with kids), but we were ready to be home.

Day 11: Rotterdam

We thought a lot about going to Belgium since we were stranded, but decided not to for two reasons. One - we just could not fathom doing a 1.5-2 hr train ride each way with the kids. They were already so done with this trip. Two - there didn't look to be anything very child-friendly in the cities in Belgium in our tour book. Also, from the news, it seemed that Brussels might be very crowded with displaced travelers, so that was a factor as well. And of course, all the fast trains were pretty much sold out.

So, we decided to stick around our most favorite city - Rotterdam (that is very heavy sarcasm ... I hated Rotterdam). In the morning, we stopped at the museum we had kept walking past: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. I could tell Seth would be really fussy as it was almost nap time and I just didn't feel like dealing with it, so Katsu and Andrew saw the museum together and me and Seth looked around the Museum garden. The garden was supposed to be nice, but was pretty dug up from construction and not very peaceful. The museum was very nice. Katsu especially wanted to see the Tower of Babel, but thought the whole collection was nice. The postcard strategy really works well with toddlers. The back of their tickets each had a picture on it, so Andrew was on the lookout for the pictures.

Afterwards, we went walking to the weekly market in Rotterdam. I wasn't very excited to walk all over Rotterdam yet again as I was especially worn out from carrying Seth. Katsu was very kind and carried him the rest of the way. By the time we found the market, both boys were asleep. This was quite a large market, we only looked at a small portion and sold everything you can think of - clothes, appliances, toys, books, food, etc. This is what Katsu had in mind for the market in Amsterdam where he was sorely disappointed. We got some fish for Katsu (yuck!), strawberries, a different kind of syrup waffle snack, some fried fish and shrimp for Andrew & Katsu, and some candy. They sold nice chocolate bars for 5 or 6 for 1 euro! We couldn't resist, but sad to say, we have already eaten all 5 or 6 that we bought. Happy with our purchases, we went to our favorite lunch spot - Le Place - and got some soup for me as well as some apple pie to round off our lunch. Katsu was too cheap to use the bathroom. Sad for him, because Andrew decided we needed to go to the park. Still no bathroom. Finally, as we walked home in search of a bathroom, Katsu miraculously found a branch library which is only open like 3 hours a day, but was open and free bathrooms. Yeah! Of course, Andrew wanted us to read him Dutch stories. Amazingly, we went to the library 2 times on this trip! And neither library had any English story books that we could find - I was kind of surprised, as in Ann Arbor, we had books of lots of languages in the children's part of the library. Then, we got some food from the grocery store for dinner and went home to watch TV and relax and pack for the most horrific day of all - traveling back to the US.

Day 10: Efteling

Since we were stuck in the Netherlands for a few extra days, we decided to go to the local theme park - Efteling. Efteling is kind of like Disney Land, but with a fairy tale theme. Pretty much only Dutch people go there, so it's not really well known, but it's very highly reviewed and has been called the World's Best Theme Park. So, we decided it was time to check it out. We took a train to Tillburg and then caught a bus, full of teenagers on their way to the amusement park.

We had so much fun. First, we started off in a fairy-tale like world. You walked through the woods going from place to place. Each little house you walked in and could see the story take place, from Sleeping Beauty to the Little Red Riding Hood and some stories I have never heard of. It was low-key, fun, and magical for the kids. They even had a pretty new one with a talking tree - too bad we couldn't understand what it was saying. It looked pretty life-like.







The next world was more like a playground and also had children's ride - a monorail like ride, a couple merry-go-rounds, and other little kid rides kind of like Disney land. Seth was totally in love with the monorail ride and would have been happy to be on it forever. He also loved watching Andrew on the merry-go-round and riding it, too. The land had a theme of people who lived on the North Pole (I think) and had them in their houses all over the land doing things. We spent the most time in this land, I think.







The next couple lands had bigger style rides. We went on a ride very similar to It's a Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, a car-driving track, and a train you pedaled with your feet and also a 3D movie attraction. They also had water rides, a ship ride, and a roller coaster or two and a haunted house and some shows and a parade, but we skipped those rides. We missed the train as we were going to take it on our way out. We also didn't get a chance to do the boats in the lake.





Overall, we loved Efteling. It was a lot of fun, very friendly for little kids (only 3 of the rides had any sort of height restriction!). The boys didn't whine or cry or fuss all day which was a MIRACLE. If you're ever in Holland, we highly recommend it.

Day 9: Kinderdijk

We were off to try to get to Kinderdijk again on Sunday morning. We didn't have proper change to take the metro (argh!), so we ended up walking down to the dock. We thought we had plenty of time, but we realized as we got closer, that we are cutting it close. So, Katsu ran ahead and I followed. We got there right before it was going to leave ... but then the ship didn't leave for another 10 or 15 minutes. Both the boys were asleep by this point, so we settled down in our seats on the top deck and enjoyed the sun. We were sitting next to some Japanese businessman, so Katsu enjoyed eavesdropping and we talked to them a bit. After awhile Andrew woke up, we had some snacks and saw the Rotterdam harbor. Rotterdam has some fun architecture ... fun to see but still didn't make it that great of a city.

When we got to Kinderdijk, there was a small cruise ship stopped there in our way. Our ship captain yelled at the other ship, until finally, after at least 15 minutes, they moved out of our way, so we could dock. Kinderdijk has many windmills and is very pretty. We walked down the way and then had a little picnic and just played with the boys in the grass. But we must have been having too much fun, because we missed the ship going back!!! We'll have to skip the narrative here, because I was so mad and, suffice it to say, it was not my best moment. We ended up finding a bus back to Rotterdam that took about an hour. Andrew was misbehaving badly, but a Dutch family befriended him and he played cell phone games on the daughter's phone. They were quite friendly. We finally made it to the metro and after a lot of help from the conductor we finally figured out the best pass we could get. The system is quite confusing.

We were pretty worn out from the trip, so we just stopped by McDonalds (not my favorite place, but they were easy, had baby seats, and included fries and fruit and some yogurt drinks ... more than in the US) and the grocery store to pick up food. We spent the evening planning what to do next and vegging out.

Day 8: Den Haag

It's Sunday night and this will probably be the end of my updates for the Netherlands. As from day 8 basically Amanda hanged out with us full-time back again, there really isn't a reason for me to keep updating. However, for whatever the reason, Amanda tells me that my updates are well written and are entertaining, though I suspect that she says this to make me feel better. Regardless, like I said, it is Sunday night so I will likely not update the rest of the trip during the week. There are some details of the trip that I would probably enjoy writing about, such as, things related to being stranded in Europe. Amanda just told me to start writing, and that I am a "verbose" or something. I guess that it means I am too wordy, she is right.

We wake up on the Day 8 knowing that we have no way of getting back to the US, so we plan to make a call to Delta airline to book a flight, as online booking site is scarcely updated and provide no practical information to move us further along in getting tickets. So after eating our breakfast, we ask our hotel manager if there is a way to call this Delta number in Amsterdam. He tells me in a broken English (he seemed drunk half the time) that the phone call would cost a Euro a minute because the hotel wasn't set up for long distance regularly, and that there are multiple "phone cafes" in our neighborhood. Assuming that international travelers are not supposed to be surprised by this archaic communication system in the Netherlands, I would have certainly hoped that he would tell me what these "phone cafes" looked like or were called. You guessed it, after additional 15 min, I wanted to ask him no more, we were headed down the street to look for these "phone cafes" to find out that they were closed because it was Saturday. Nothing operates on weekends in Europe, but I knew that before. So we go back to hotel, pack our stuff and headed over to Amanda's conference because we figured they could help us out with making phone calls there (they were helping others out there before).

When we get there, they were not equipped to call Amsterdam, so they directed us towards the "public phone booths" set up near the Rotterdam central station. I must emphasize that Amsterdam and Rotterdam are like 20 min away from each other, and the phone systems have no business of making themselves this complicated. Either way, we are just a traveler so as vulnerable as we are of being taken advantage of, we go to the phone booth located near the station. We find that like most thing in Netherlands, these phones don't take cash, they take credit cards but not American credit cards, so we had to go buy phone cards. You must again ask yourselves "okay, this place, to get a phone card, where is it?" before being told "of course it's this store around the corner that sells newspapers that sells phone cards, why are you travelers all so incompetent?". Well if your Dutch majesty PH-dot-D-dot could put up a sign for us lowly incompetents then we won't have to bother your precious weekend time anymore.

Seriously, I've traveled a lot. I've been to 40 countries or more and I'm usually lot more patient and understanding about how some places are just not travelers friendly. Netherlands aren't that bad...as long as you don't get into a situation like ours. But we are already tired because we've been walking 6+ miles everyday because your public transportation systems won't take cash or our American credit card and we have two kids that whine and I am just whining because I am also a whiny baby.

Anyway, we get ourselves a 10 euro phone card. We call the Delta number we got online. We are put on hold as expected. I expected that we would be on hold at least half an hour, maybe an hour or two. What I didn't know that I was on hold for just 10 min! BECAUSE OUR PHONE CARD RAN OUT OF MONEY IN 10 MIN!!! Apparently calling Amsterdam doesn't cost this much, but since it's an airline number, it's considered "informational line" and it costs a euro a minute. A EURO A MINUTE! If you were watching the news in Europe, 24h a day the news was about the volcanic ash and the effect on travels. On Fri/Sat, news reporters would relay us a message from the airlines/airports to please stay away from the airport because they would not be able to help them. Well I know why people keep going to the airport, because you can't use online system, you can't spend 200 bucks to be on hold to book an airplane ticket. The best thing is we heard from Amanda's boss who went to the airport on Sunday that there was absolutely noone at the airport then. Not even an airport personnel. Awesome!

So we wasted our 10 euro, and decided, whatever, we will get back to our hotel this evening, G-chat Amanda's family and have them call the 1-800 Delta number to rebook our flights. I thank Amanda's dad because apparently this was the best move to make. Even though Amanda's dad had to be on hold on the phone with Delta for a while, and our g-chat not functioning well because of the cross-atlantic cable overload, he got us tickets to fly out of Wednesday. That was the earliest we could get out. A guy at our hotel went through a travel agency in Amsterdam, only to get a flight back on Sunday-4 days later...which is today. Hopefully he got back safely.

So instead of trying to book our flight, we headed to the station and decided to do what we planned to do all day long, visit Den Haag. Den Haag, though is not a capital of Netherlands, it basically function as such because it has a parliament and a palace. I don't really know why Amsterdam is a capital, it has no business to be so. We take a train to Den Haag and arrives there around 11am. There are three things we wanted to see: 1) parliament, 2)Mauristhuis, 3)Marudodam. Mauristhuis is a museum with the infamour painting by Vermere called "A girl with a pearl earring", which was made into a movie on its own with Scarlet Johansen a number of years ago. Marudodam is basically a miniature Netherlands. From Den Haag HS(short for Holland Spoor or something) station was about a mile away from parliament/Mauristhus area and Marudodam was another mile or two out. On the way to the parliament, we stopped by yet another Le Marche/moevenpick located at a department store called V&D to have a lunch.

By the parliament


and the parliament itself




The staff there was very nice to us who had two kids and helped operate the elevators. It seemed that this museum had a lot of secret passges for the workers. Our elevators were also hidden in the walls and I saw couple of curators popping out of the wall several times. Andrew behaved very well, whereas Seth wanted to stay in one of the display rooms and did not want to leave. Afterwards we made a long walk to Marudodam, Andrew fell asleep on the way there so we had to wake him up. He had a blast. We had a blast too, I think. It was a lot of fun. They have few spots where you can put coins to make miniatures do different stuff. Andrew liked the ones where you put 10c and a miniature truck brought you a tiny Mars bar, as well as a spot where putting 10c turned on the town fair.














Seth seemed to enjoy the place, too. After staying there for several hours we took the tram back to Den Haag HS. It so happens that public transportation system ticket that we bought on the way to Keukenhoff worked so we used that to get back. Den Haag also has a Den Haag Central station where there is a metro that runs from Rotterdam but they use a different ticketing system. So as the bus. They are transitioning the systems in Netherlands to a shared system so people wouldn't have to use multiple paying systems but this newer system is very unfriendly for travelers (you have to buy a card that costs quite a bit of money and then put money into it to ride public transportation). Anyway, we get back to Den Haag HS, ride the train back to Rotterdam central, and walked all the way back to our hotel again (stopping by at the grocery store to grab a sandwich and grape again). Like I said before, we then got a hold of our manager to let us use the computer, got a hold of our friend Helaman from Boston to call Amanda's family and have her dad talk to us on Gmail to book our flights back. Thank you.

Day 7: Rotterdam

On the seventh day of our trip, we planned so that we all (including Amanda) take a boat down to Kinderdijk (a World Heritage site with many many windmills) in the afternoon. In the morning, we left before Seth decided that it's his nap time. He promptly fell asleep on a sling shortly after we left the hotel. We walked to a park by the Euromast. We hoped that we find some sort of playground in it, but we couldn't. So instead we walked around the town looking for a playground while making our way to the Maritime museum.



We found a playground by the apartment complex near the Erasmusbrug so we played there for a while but it's been so windy that day that Andrew decided that he had enough of it for then. So we made our way to the Maritime museum, dropped by at the grocery store to grab lunch for all of us and arrived at the museum shortly before 11am.

I used my D-card of the Holland pass and kids went in there for free. The museum was pretty impressive. First we made our way to the second floor where they had a historical exhibits of boats from all ages. Also, I have been to a public bathroom with two small kids to do #1 before, but for the first time I used a public bathroom with two small kids to do #2. With #1, you can just have Seth in a stroller and tell Andrew to just wait, but you can't really do that with #2 because you want him in your sight. Gladly the bathroom was extremely well kept, but there was something eerie about being in a small space with two kids (one in a sling, another in a stoller) taking care of business.



Then we went to the third floor of the museum, which was just totally awesome. First it had an exhibit where they showed how animals used to be transported across the ocean. They had real size animals that looked real, and Andrew had a blast. In the end, they had a small picture with bunch of stuffed animals.



The floor also had an annex that was a playroom for kids. I think we were there for at least an hour, but we could have stayed there lot longer. Both kids had a blast.





Since it was almost 1pm, we made our way downstairs and waited mommy to meet us to walk to the boat deck. Andrew and Seth both love these Dutch veggie sticks (basically chips) that are like only dollar at the store, so they munched on those while we waited.



Amanda got there shortly after our meeting time, and we headed toward the deck. Unfortunately, the boat was not in service, since apparently a boat crashed into their deck at Kinderdijk the evening before. You heard that right, some boat annihilated the entire deck the day before we got there. Some luck.

Certainly we were disappointed, especially Andrew who couldn't understand why we couldn't leave on our boat while other boats and other passengers were (not going to Kinderdijk). We even thought of taking some other boat that went to some other random places but figured that it wasn't worth it and decided to take a boat later, as we at this point knew about the Volcanic ash and we expected that our flight would likely be canceled.

So we had our snack-lunch by the deck, which we shouldn't have because it was really windy, and headed to toward some other random places in Rotterdam like Cubic house, an iconic contemporary library, etc.





Cubic house was hard to get to with a stroller, but it was worth using the E-card of our Holland ticket. The libary was pretty nice with spacious children's area.



At this point we had 0 euro in cash, and with one day left in Netherlands (or several days as it turned out in the end), we had limited options on where to get food. I had 6 euros for our lunch earlier for everyone, so we were all still pretty hungry. Since we were tired of going to a grocery store, we tried to find places to eat with kids. However, no places would take our American credit card (without PIN or for whatever other reason it may be), so we took a small amount of cash at ATM (because we didnt know how long we would stay there. We ended up taking out money out of ATM twice more before we left) and went to Le Marche, which is a self-service restaurant that I think is Swiss (Moevenpick, they have them in US at some locations, too). This turns out to be the right move, and we all had our fillings of vegetables which we lacked for the last 7 days. We grabbed some sandwiches and grapes at the grocery store on the way back (of course no grocery stores take credit cards) to eat for dinner. Andrew wanted a meatball, so we grabbed one as well only to find out it's some weird boiled fish paste ball that was coated in bbq sauce.

At the hotel, we got a hold of our hotel manager so that he can open up the front-desk where the computer was located so we can check our flight status online. Like Amanda said, our hotel manager was never there. It was extremely inconvenient and frustrating at most times, and in my opinion, they seemed sort of airheaded. I would ask something and then he wouldn't be listening to what I asked and goes off like 15 min on something remotely related to what I asked, leaving me with no answer and no energy to ask him anything further.

We found out that our flights were cancelled, as well as all the flights for the next 5 days. The online rebooking site was not working, so we thought we better call the Delta airline the next morning. It turned out this process was very complicated but that is a story for the next post.