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Amsterdam Day 4&5
I woke up on Sunday morning feeling like my head was a balloon. My allergies were in full effect and I knew I looked just as bad as I felt when I saw the looks of concern on the other girls' faces when we got down to breakfast. My eyes were so red and puffy, my throat felt like it was almost swollen shut so I could barely talk or swallow, and my nose was so stuffy. My allergies had been bothering me a little bit the first day and a half, but I think going to the botanical garden really set them off.
Luckily, I found a Benadryl in my purse so I took that and Sarah, bless her soul, walked to a nearby store and bought me some allergy medication. Kendyl and Liv had to check out of the hostel by 11 and I wanted nothing more than to get on that plane with them. The last full day there was absolutely miserable for me because I couldn't go out and do anything in the city because I didn't want to breathe in the air and make my allergies even worse. I only went outside when Sarah and I walked to get lunch around 1:30, followed by gelato, and then we stopped by a small grocery store to get some things for dinner so that I wouldn't have to go outside again. It was by no means a healthy dinner since we didn't have a kitchen or a fridge, but it was enough to satisfy me and I'd prefer that over going outside again.
Other than meals, that last full day just mainly consisted of watching Netflix. It was really sad just having to stay inside most of the day because Sarah and I had had plans to finally get pancakes in Amsterdam because for whatever reason, they were EVERYWHERE.
Luckily, the next day when we got to the airport, we had a lot of time to kill before our flight and we happened to stumble across a place with mini Dutch pancakes. They were so good and I'm glad we finally got our Amsterdam pancakes even if it wasn't quite in the way we planned to have them.
Aside from the pancakes, Monday ended up being a pretty long and stressful travel day. Our plane was about 20 minutes late so we didn't board it until about 40 minutes after when we were already supposed to have taken off. Normally, while annoying, this wouldn't have been the end of the world. However, Sarah and I had a bus to catch at the airport to get back to Belfast from Dublin and the next one wasn't for hours. I was stressed the whole flight looking at the time and seeing it getting closer and closer to when the bus would leave. We finally landed with only 20 minutes left until the bus departed.
Sprinting through the Dublin airport was definitely a low point of the trip. It also didn't help that I couldn't breathe because of my allergies. When we made it to Passport Control we had only about 7 or 8 minutes left until the bus left. We got in the non-EU passport line, which thankfully was much shorter than the EU passport line. After asking to cut in front of two people in the line, and dealing with a not-so-nice passport control employee, we left passport control with 5 minutes to spare. I thought there was no way we would make it. We sprinted as fast as we could with our incredibly heavy backpacks, and somehow, we made it to the bus stop with 3 minutes to spare and got onto the bus. I honestly have no idea how we made it.
The rest of the trip went pretty smoothly with the exception of the bus pulling off on the side of the motorway for a few minutes while the driver got out and fixed something (no idea what) but he said not to worry and that we'd be back on the road in 2 minutes. Sarah and I were imaging the worst, because of course everything that could go wrong would that day. Luckily though, we were back on the road in only a few minutes.
We started a saying between the four of us "just Liv's luck". Liv always seems to have bad luck, and while on that trip, we all experienced some degree of that bad luck as well. So now when we experience a spell of bad luck, we just attribute it to just Liv's luck.
I'm really glad I got the opportunity to go to Amsterdam because apart from the allergies and the extreme culture shock I felt, it was an amazing experience and it gave me a bit more confidence in myself for traveling in the future.
