Amsterdam to Almaty on KLM

I had forgotten how great an airline KLM is as I’ve not flown them in a long time. The flight attendants are really friendly and the food is actually pretty decent, even in coach. Of course there was a minor issue with our seats but I’m going to attribute that to Northwest’s general incompetence. A couple of weeks ago I spent a good 45 minutes on the phone with the Northwest call center getting our seats re-arranged from the defaults we had been assigned. Imagine my surprise then when I actually boarded the plane and the seats we had been assigned were not the ones on our itinerary (printed from the Northwest website) but the original ones assigned to us by KLM. Grrr….not a good way to start a long flight. Lesson learned – check everything before you board.

Despite it being an overnight flight I didn’t sleep much (although the girls did) and spent a few hours reading a book on my new Kindle. I finally broke down and bought one just for this trip as the thought of hauling books half way across the world made me cringe. Plus we were right at our luggage weight limits anyway. I must admit, the Kindle is my latest must have travel accessory. It is a really amazing device and a pleasure to read on. If you can get by the initial cost, I highly recommend it.

So the friendly KLM crew got us to Almaty airport in Kazakhstan. We even got a brownie for breakfast!