Munroe and Jamie checked out early and headed for the street market. I left the hotel just after 10 and went to meet them by the metro station.
We took the metro to Amsterdam Zuid (south station), then took the intercity train to Schiphol airport. The entire trip was maybe 30 minutes, and we had good timing with trains.
During this trip, I received two messages from Icelandair: the first confirming my itinerary change to British Airways flights connecting through London Heathrow, and the second stating "Your Icelandair flight is cancelled".
As we were already at the airport by the time I saw them, I decided to go to the original gate anyway, to discover if any additional information was available. Munroe and Jamie headed to a different terminal, as they were flying a different airline.
The 1 PM flight had been rescheduled to something like 6 or 6:30 PM, at which point I would've ended up spending the night at the Keflavík airport, I think. Instead, Icelandair had helpfully rebooked me through Heathrow just after 4 PM, getting me back to Newark about 4 hours later than planned.
This also meant I had to go to a different terminal, go through passport control because I was now leaving the Schengen Area in the Netherlands instead of in Iceland, and somehow figure out how to get new boarding passes without going outside security to the BA check-in counter.
I went to the gate, but it was so early that it was empty. The "departing flights" board had a column labeled "help", which indicated T5 (transfer desk 5) for help with this flight. I hiked over to T5, getting stopped for a random security interview along the way, only to discover it was also deserted. The hand-written sign said something about T6, but when I went over there it was just for KLM and Delta; they suggested going back to the gate. It felt like I walked about 2 miles in that airport.
Eventually, I found a few random BA agents at a different gate and convinced them to print me some boarding passes.
With a few more hours to kill, I found a spot to wait and swap stories with some fellow (delayed) passengers. A random Dutch woman on her way to London for holiday was full of questions about the US, was curious what I thought about Amsterdam, Aruba, other European cities, etc., and educated me about Dutch winter activities like the Elfstedentocht. She also confessed to not liking cheese or skating, which made her weird in Holland.
The flight to Heathrow was delayed about an hour, also, which was fine with me; I had been looking at a 2.5 hour layover anyway.
The 1-hour flight was uneventful, and landed at the same time that it departed, given the time change.
At Heathrow, I had to take a train to another terminal and go through security again.
It hadn't occurred to me that British Airways would also be feeding me, so second dinner was about 3 hours after the first. Then they provided a (hot) snack, 3 or 4 hours after that.
We landed in Newark just before 10 PM EST. As usual, the worst part of the entire trip was the disorganized shitshow that is US immigration at EWR. If there are any international visitors who have that as their first experience here, I'd be surprised if they ever come back.
Regardless, it was after midnight by the time I got home, but at least I wasn't sleeping in an airport in Iceland. 😉
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