Travelling

For some reason the planes leaving for the US always seem to have a departure time between 11AM and noon.
In itself that is great, means we arrive around 3PM local time.
With usually 2 hours driving time to get home, we have little problems with traffic around the cities where we arrive.
The difficulties are at this side of the pond.
Having to be at the airport 3 hours earlier, it means that it is always a gamble if we can catch the first train from Groningen to A'dam.
Getting at the train station by bus is impossible that early, first train leaves at 5 AM. So this time we ordered a cab to pick us up to bring us to the train. Hoping the train would be on time, since we had only 10 minutes after arrival before we had to check in.
The cab was on time, actually, it was 15 minutes early. Turned out he had picked up another couple for the station and we could share costs.
But than it turned out to be a nerve wrecking train ride.
Something I fear for every time happened. The train had a small problem in Zwolle, so we got stuck there for several minutes. Not too bad, but it meant that the rest of the trip we were stuck behind a train that stopped at every station instead of being able to do only a few as planned.
We were more than 30 minutes late at the airport.

At that moment I learned a good lesson.
It is great if you can be there 3 hours early, but if not, don't panic.
This time we already knew our seats before, so that wasn't a problem either.
We got in line, checked in, got in line again for customs and than could almost straight go to our gate and hardly had to wait.

The flight was fast and easy. Flying into Philadelphia means you get to see a beautiful part of New Jersey and we could already see the beaches that we would visit a few days later
This time Immigration had no difficult questions besides the standard look of disbelief when I say that the tall boy next to me is my son.
And thanks to our former experience we knew to look for our bags next to the belt instead of on the belt.

What surprises me almost every time when arriving in the US, the airports don't seem busy. No long lines and I always wonder where all those people go that get off the plane.
It also meant that walking out we had absolutely no trouble locating Jack who was waiting for us.
But maybe that was also to blame on the orange cap he was wearing.