Corinne CrawfordThe Netherlands
After an all night flight, I arrived in the Netherlands with my aunt and Maverick, her dog. We immediately went to the rental car desk and got instructions and everything for the car and were directed to walk the length of an indoor paseo to the actual garage where the cars were. We checked in there and got all of our stuff packed in only to realize that the car was a stick shift. Now, I could do it… but I didn’t want to . It was enough to try to navigate traffic and directions and signs in a different language, I really wanted the ease of an automatic. I checked my reservation to make sure I had not made a mistake with my request and sure enough,I did reserve an automatic. So back to the lady at the lot to explain. She got us another car, a new one that had never been driven and she helped us unload one car and load up the other. Then we put the directions in the navigation and off we went. By the time we were close to the location over an hour later, I was almost at the point where I thought I was going to have to pull over because I was soooo tired and was in danger of falling asleep. But we were close so I mentally slapped my face and we made it. We checked in at about 2pm and found our way to our bungalow.
Now, I think we both were under the impression that maybe we were sharing the bungalow and would each have our own rooms but we were not sure. We arrived at the bungalow, very nicely appointed with a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms with one bathroom. The bedrooms were configured with one with a double bed and the other with two twin beds so we were thinking that perhaps we were sharing the bungalow with someone else and that we were sharing a room but we did not know so we put our bags, without unpacking, in the room with the two beds and waited. We did not have to wait too long before another person, Diane, arrived and promptly told us that Maverick had to be put away while she brought her dog in because her dog was aggressive to other dogs. How in the world do you bring a dog that tries to attack other dogs to a dog competition? Anyway, it was a weird start and it wouldn’t get any less weird. After figuring out that my aunt and I were to share a room, we promptly both took a nap in our tiny but comfortable beds after the long trip.
