Friday, April 17, 2009

row 56, E and F...

Denver to Frankfurt to Amsterdam

On the long flight I read USA Today, three chapters of The Terror, (Dan Simmons), watched High School Musical III (again, I confess, and mostly for the fabulous choreography. In a parallel life I’m a dancer.)

I also watched Twilight for the first time. (My first husband was a vampire of sorts, so I related to Bella and I thought maybe the reason Edward can’t read her mind is because there’s not much to be read at this point in her life… I can see why teens love this film, and I confess I thought the vampires were all pretty hot, but this is a dangerous movie for girls. More on this, later.)

Bob and I were sitting across the aisle from one another, but knowing absence makes the heart grow fonder, we dealt with it. (We dated for six years before we married; I lived in Denver and he lived 30 miles away in Boulder, which almost counts as a long distance relationship.) Bob wasn’t too lonely, since he was sitting next to a beautiful young German girl, on his right hand side, though she was a sleeping beauty. Which he’d pick over a chatty cathy any day.

It was nearly a ten-hour flight from Denver to Frankfurt, our first stop and port of entry into the EU. Lufthansa treats you pretty good, even way back at the butt end of the bus. We were given the hot towels to wipe hands and faces, free drinks and two complementary hot meals. The flight attendants were all tall and striking; they transformed the aisle into a fashion runway each time they came striding down with a drink cart.

Bob set aside his study of optics for this vacation, and brought along some frivolous reading (The White Company, an obscure novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about a young man raised in a monastery who ends up fighting in the Hundred Years War with France.) He also had his book of New York Times crosswords, which he carries around like the New Testament.

From Frankfurt it was a short hop to Amsterdam. Looking down from the plane, there sure is a lot of water in this country. Looks like they should be growing rice instead of tulips…

Twenty-one hours after leaving Adam’s house, we’re in Holland! I haven’t slept a wink, and I’m not about to now, baby!

1 comment:

DJan said...

I am sitting in the Clarion Hotel at 4:00am, getting ready to start MY version of your yesterday. It will be three flights and 27 hours from now that I land in Alexander the Great Airport. I'll try to capture the flavor as well as you did with your blog post. Thanks again for letting me travel with you!