On Wednesday evening, Kathy Cheryl and I had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Cheryl was able to fly home the next day.

Kathy and I needed a few more days to rest, recover, and figure out how to get home as soon as possible. On Saturday, it was time for one final adventure. We took the free shuttle to Schipol Airport then the train to Centraal Station. We exited on the north side of the station and, on a whim, jumped on a ferry that was leaving shortly.

We got off, found an information kiosk and asked where we were on the city map we had. Definitely NOT where we wanted to be so we ran back to the same ferry and headed back to Centraal Station.

Once we exited the south side of Centraal Station, we were able to walk directly to Dam Square. Very crowded today!

The tulips are now in full bloom.

We walked through the Red Light District and made our way back to Centraal Station.

Time to repack our suitcases and get ready to fly home tomorrow!

Overnight, my phone updated. This morning I had to reenter the 6-digit passcode twice. Success until I tried to actually use my phone – the passcode no longer worked. Two online chats with Apple support (about 3 hours) resulted in an appointment with an authorized repair facility in south Amsterdam. The 16-minute taxi ride cost $55 USD. At this point .. oh well. Things were going quite well, the young man, Yosni, at Cool Blue was great. And then …

Beep beep beep went the intercom. “Please exit the building immediately. Use any available exit.” The message continued to repeat. We all headed out. Blue jackets = Cool Blue employees.

However, it was a very tall building and people continued to stream out. There was quite a crowd gathered on the sidewalk.

The next announcement: “Everyone should move to the next block in case the building comes down.” Just one block? No one seemed concerned. Cheryl spotted Yosni in the crowd and asked him if he could continue working on my phone even though we were outside (love you, Cheryl).

Next announcement: “Thank you. This was a drill.” We all headed back into the building, my phone was restored, all data from the cloud migrated back. All was well until we got to the train station which rejected both our cards to get a ticket. We walked back to a grocery store (Albert Heijn of course) to get coins. This part of Amsterdam is quite modern with very interesting and unique architecture.

We were back at our hotel at 4:30. A whole day spent getting my phone back – although it was also a day not spent completely in our hotel rooms. Sadly, Cheryl and I are both still positive and can’t fly home tomorrow as planned. We are both so ready for some good news.