Shopping Therapy

Our luggage is still lost... Its almost been a whole week in the same cloths.

We swapped hotel this morning. I had to book another night in a hotel as we had nothing to camp with. Nothing to ride in, nothing at all really... We had planned to camp this night but that was not possible. Booking our hotel for one more night was $$$ so I got on the internet and booked us into another hotel at an 'internet' rate. The swap was not simple. First we had to take the car out of the garage... 90 Euros for the two nights! It is the going rate in Amsterdam.

At the new hotel the car did not fit into their car park and we had to park it near the station in some public car park (also at 45 Euro per night). The car is only small, but the hotel was sure it was too tall. Not to worry, they also would have charged us 45 Euro for the car night.

Tonnes of Lost Luggage

In the afternoon Troy, myself and Lucas headed out to Schiphol airport to check out the lost luggage. It was not easy getting access, but we got it. We found the room with all the Heathrow 'un-processed' lost luggage in it. Our gear was not there. I also checked other rooms with luggage in it. There was heaps of lost luggage by the looks of it. Yes, they even admitted themselves that Heathrow had a bad couple of days.

British airways gave us some forms to fill in if it hadn't been found by tomorrow and pledged to pay us ­35 Euro per day our luggage was delayed. After all, at this time of the high season 2-5 days were reasonable delays for luggage... If we had to buy anything keep receipts and send them to BA, although he could not tell us if we would get anything refunded nor had paperwork to explain it. The forms we had did ask for the inventory. Our luggage has a full Patagonia outfit for 4 people in it, $$$$$$ a huge loss. I assume we will get the luggage eventually, but when? BA was advised of our Paris hotel.

Shopping Spree

We raced back to town to catch the shops before they closed, and we went on a wild sweaty shopping spree. We bought duffle bags, tents, sleeping bags, bicycle shorts, raingear, panniers for the bikes... oh, underpants and socks,... It was a huge shop in a record time. We lugged heavy bags out the shop as they locked the doors behind us.

Then we came back to David who was lounging in the hotel, where he told us later that the amount of time we took convinced him that we had some major developments. We think he got his gear as he went to the transfer desk in Heathrow at the time and got his flight changes done there, whilst us three did it in the BA lounge where a friendly lady helped us while we had a cold beverage... David eventually got his bags, we didn't. Who knows what happened. We just think it is frustrating that someone made the effort to look for the medicine, found the first aid kit that was part of David's luggage, and my medicine bag, but the rest of our luggage was not taken! Surely they must have been placed together!

Tomorrow...

Anyway, we had an Argentinean steak for dinner and a relaxing pint of stout in a cafe. Tomorrow David and Troy will drive off to Paris and Lucas and I will have to find and buy some crucial computer/camera parts necessary for the documentary. We will need to postpone our morning flight to Paris, but BA was not open after 6pm when we called up - the earliest opportunity we had. Lucas is shooting good footage, but we really miss the external microphones as the audio is lousy from the built-in mike.

Tomorrow is another day and we should be in Paris tomorrow night. In the early morning we are all going for a run around Amsterdam to regain fitness and lung health!