Jimmy’s Birthday...

While we didn’t have a party for Jimmy’s birthday, we went to a party that day for Tristram’s 60th. On our walk to the pinball arcade, we saw this interesting sculpture on the side of a building...

…and a beautiful pub that we should visit sometime. 

That evening, we had a sophisticated dinner of ready-made salads and cheap wine on a train heading to Harwich, where we caught the overnight ferry to Holland. We had submitted our passports to UK Immigration for our visas as soon as we had returned from the US back in late January and received them back just in the nick of time to book this trip for Jimmy to attend a conference in Amsterdam.

The ferry’s public spaces had a major renovation since our last journey in January. We paid extra for lounge access, which was a lovely space with drinks and snacks at night and a light breakfast in the morning. 

Once again, we ran into trouble when entering the EU because we supposedly overstayed our visa. Jimmy almost lost it, but somehow I kept my cool, which is such a role reversal; I couldn’t help but laugh that we had troubles at the airport, train station and ferry terminal. We were brought into secondary by a Dutch immigration officer covered in tattoos on biceps that were about the size of my thighs; he was much less scary than he looked. Luckily I had an extra document with me this time: proof that we had deregistered in mid-December in Voorschoten and had returned our Dutch visas in early January. He said that someone had failed to file a necessary document and promised that he would take care of it. Although we had heard that before, he was a man of his word and we’ve had no further problems entering or exiting the EU.