Yesterday I (Mike) was supposed to fly to England for a weekend away at Frame2006, a sort of timberframing conference. I was looking forward to talking to a bunch of guys, in my own language, about old buildings. Sadly, it was not to be. Despite, or in spite, of the fact that we do a lot of traveling, sometimes you just forget things. Maybe it was because this was my first solo trip in 3 years and I have really gotten used to my wife arranging all the details... Anyway 30 minutes into my 2 hour train ride to get to the airport an hour before check-in, I realised I had left my passport. Quite boneheaded. Long, sad story short, turning back and catching the next train, I missed my flight (something I have never done.) We buy cheap non-refundable tickets and there was no way I could afford another one.
So, lemons. Bitter, stressful, lemons.
Luckily it was a beautiful fall day in Amsterdam and while Katharine and James came to join me to go to the Artis Zoo for the afternoon, I walked around the canals and saw some beautiful old buildings anyway.
I think the last zoo I went to was the Bronx zoo when I was ten years old; we all had a good time and look forward to going back and seeing the 2/3 we probably missed. James did play on the cool big kids playground but he mostly wanted to climb up the big slides as kids came down.
Note to fellow bloggers- our ability to comment on other blogs is frozen due to blogger-beta use and I've also heard its difficult to comment here for the same reason, they promise to fix it soon. If I had the time I'd probably switch back but hopefully it will be ironed out.
2 comments:
What an incredibly frustrating story. If something like this happens again, feel free to find a phone and give me a call. I could try to race up by car. (A friend of mine, on a previous visit, would borrow a mobile from strangers to send me SMS messages. People were very obliging!)
Mike you are a complete idiot. Glad to know some things never change. :-)
Seriuosly, that bites - everyone needs a vacation, and you screwed yourself out of one.
p.s. We went to the zoo yesterday, too, and we finally (after years of membership) had the opportunity to SEE the lion roar. Awesome.
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