July 5, 2017         Amsterdam to Chicago

Today was going to be a LONG day.  Our flight from Amsterdam to Stockholm was at 11:00, and as our usual practice we were at the airport about three hours early.  We had a 3.5 hour layover in Stockholm and then about a nine hour flight home.  We would arrive in Chicago at 18:30 local time: an 18 hour day.

Just because I do this kind of thing here is a summary of our travelling:

We took 20 trains and one ferry the total scheduled travel time was 66 hours.
We always get to the station early so I’m estimating we waited 15 hours.
We took six flights for a scheduled time of 26 hours.
We waited at the airports for about 12 hours.
We took two funicular rides for about 10 minutes

Our trip covered 41 days, May 26^th to July 5^th and we spent about five days on planes, trains, one ferry and two funiculars.  This could be the last time we do something like this.  However there are 18 paintings in France outside of Paris and that could make an interesting driving tour.

We saw 34 paintings on the 1001 list on this trip, including substitutes, and are now up to 651/1001.
We saw 7 of the 8 possible Jan van Eyck paintings.
We saw 3 of the 4 possible Paintings that Changed the World PtCtW.
We saw 4 of the 5 Caravaggio paintings.
We saw 2 of the 2 La Tour paintings.
I haven’t counted up the Leonardo and Michelangelo paintings, sculptures and drawings, because no one cares but me.

And Sue is adding in here…6 different currencies.  Since I am the banker in the family, I had to deal with this.  We have Russian rubles, Polish zloty, Hungarian forints, Danish krone, Czech koruna and the good old euro sitting in baggies ready for another trip.