Sue's purchases and travels

Our trip to Amsterdam was to  be a quick flight via SAS from Stockholm's Arlanda airport. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and headed to the SAS Lounge since we were traveling on FREE business class tickets earned through Peter's frequent travels to California this year.  When it came time to go to our gate Peter saw the status switch from on time to cancelled!  Turns out there was not a crew for the plane.  I blame the sudden warm and sunny weather.  We were told the only way to get us to Amsterdam (in time to board our ship the following day) would be a flight to Copenhagen and then a flight to Brussels and THEN a bus to Amsterdam.  We arrived in Brussels around 11 at night.  It was rainy and cold.  It was a smaller plane so we had to take stairs out of the plane (holding my carry on which contained only my bathing suit and about 10 pounds of (spoiler alert) candy for the Klaragals.  We then boarded a bus to take us to the terminal in Brussels.  Our luggage...no surprise here...was not in Brussels  We climbed in the first of two taxi started the two hour drive to Amsterdam.  The rain was torrential and the traffic pretty heavy for late in the evening.  We came upon a traffic jam which, thanks to our non aggressive drive, had us go just 2 kilometers in 60 minutes.  It was 2:30 in the morning when we arrived at the Amsterdam Airport.  The driver stopped at the departure hall dropped us and our hand luggage off, and zoomed away.  He never bothered to notice that the doors were locked!  The 5 of us sloshed our way past three doors before finally finding an open one.   We then began the pathetic search for our luggage.  We made 4 trips to lost luggage before the security person would finally allow us in to search for our bags.  They weren't there.   We left the airport with a phone number to call in the morning and caught a cab to our hotel.  On the way, while stopped at a light, someone backed into our taxi.  Our driver jumped out yelling...."Are you drunk??!! And then took a flashlight from his car and proceeded to check the damage.  We practically kissed the ground in front of our hotel when we checked in at 3:30 am.   The hotel was glorious and had the most perfect bathroom...including heated floor.  I took a long hot bath and settled in for my 4 hours of sleep!  In the morning Peter headed to the airport (since the phone number we had went to a phone that was never answered) while I headed out to buy some clothes.  If you want to feel like a fat American go clothing shopping in Amsterdam.  (or anywhere in Europe)  The H&M store had nothing that fit me!  I was directed to the store that specialized in larger sizes...very depressing.  I had 90 minutes to shop and spent 30 of it discovering I was supersized! I found myself begging to jump the line of women waiting to try on clothes.  All but one let me ahead.  I zoomed back just in time to meet Peter and the taxi he had arranged for our transport to the ship.  Peter learned that our luggage had never left Stockholm (can't blame them...I too love that city!) and was promised it would be delivered to the ship when we docked in Bergen two days later.  Time will tell.