Although this was a last minute trip, only booked a week ago, I have nonetheless been counting down the days, hours, and minutes. Finally, I woke up on Monday and thought, "this is it!"
With cold, rainy weather in the forecast for Amsterdam, I struggled not to over pack. Adding tall boots and a helmet is my excuse for having a carry-on in addition to the normal suitcase -- and I wanted to leave room for purchases!
Lin and I had a great time chit-chatting on the fight from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Then we met Ryan, and it started to feel real. The flight to Dublin was light, so we were able to spread out and have some room. Unfortunately, a delay in departing caused us to miss our connection to Amsterdam. Despite running full tilt from one end of the Dublin airport to the other, we had a 3 hour layover. It was actually nice to sit and talk to Lin and Ryan about their experiences buying horses and particularly what Ryan looks for in a young prospect.
Admittedly, when I see a horse with suspension in its gaits, I start to get a bit starry-eyed. So Ryan explained how all of the "floatiness" can actually be difficult to turn into the most collected movements, like the piaffe and passage. Horse shopping has been quite a learning experience thus far, and I'm sure this week will be chock full of new concepts for me.
We finally make it to AMS, find our rental car, and we head to the tulip gardens. Thankfully, we did not book any horses to see this first day since it's mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. We visited Keukenhof and the weather could not have been more beautiful for our walks through the gardens.
From the gardens, we drove to the town of Uden to spend the night. Traffic is heavy around Amsterdam so it was slow going despite 8 lane highways. We finally made it to a very nice modern hotel and quickly cleaned up for dinner. We walked across the street to "Marc's BBQ." As Ryan explained, Marc is none other than Anky Van Grunsven's brother. It's a small world. The food was excellent -- had pork satay with cucumber salad and we split a bottle of chardonnay among us.
Now, off to bed to start the real fun tomorrow. We begin the horse-shopping at 8:30 a.m.!
With cold, rainy weather in the forecast for Amsterdam, I struggled not to over pack. Adding tall boots and a helmet is my excuse for having a carry-on in addition to the normal suitcase -- and I wanted to leave room for purchases!
Lin and I had a great time chit-chatting on the fight from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Then we met Ryan, and it started to feel real. The flight to Dublin was light, so we were able to spread out and have some room. Unfortunately, a delay in departing caused us to miss our connection to Amsterdam. Despite running full tilt from one end of the Dublin airport to the other, we had a 3 hour layover. It was actually nice to sit and talk to Lin and Ryan about their experiences buying horses and particularly what Ryan looks for in a young prospect.
Admittedly, when I see a horse with suspension in its gaits, I start to get a bit starry-eyed. So Ryan explained how all of the "floatiness" can actually be difficult to turn into the most collected movements, like the piaffe and passage. Horse shopping has been quite a learning experience thus far, and I'm sure this week will be chock full of new concepts for me.
We finally make it to AMS, find our rental car, and we head to the tulip gardens. Thankfully, we did not book any horses to see this first day since it's mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. We visited Keukenhof and the weather could not have been more beautiful for our walks through the gardens.
From the gardens, we drove to the town of Uden to spend the night. Traffic is heavy around Amsterdam so it was slow going despite 8 lane highways. We finally made it to a very nice modern hotel and quickly cleaned up for dinner. We walked across the street to "Marc's BBQ." As Ryan explained, Marc is none other than Anky Van Grunsven's brother. It's a small world. The food was excellent -- had pork satay with cucumber salad and we split a bottle of chardonnay among us.
Now, off to bed to start the real fun tomorrow. We begin the horse-shopping at 8:30 a.m.!
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