Robin & Colleen's Olympics Adventure

Hard to believe that we have been here for 16 days and that the Olympics are over. We have had such a great time in Sochi and we could not have had better travel companions than Kate, Agnes and Jess.
We had a 04:45 a.m. flight out of Sochi to Amsterdam routing through Kiev, it was going to be a long night.  We had a shuttle pickup atmidnight, however like our arrival it had some challenges.  After a couple of calls, the shuttle did finally arrive and we headed to the airport after a 1 1/2 hour wait outside.  Nights in Sochi do cool off so we were a little cold when we arrived.  Despite the number of people and all of the teams and their sports gear at the airport, it was relatively quick to get through the check in process. The next challenge was to find a seat or a space on the floor while we waited to board our plane.  Our plane was only an hour late leaving and we were on a Ukraine International Airlines flight with the Ukraine athletes.  Once we arrived in Kiev there was quite the fan fare as the Ukrainian Women’s Biathlon team had won a Gold Medal, the 1st Olympic Medal for Ukraine.  We waited to disembark while they rolled out the red carpet for all of the athletes who exited into the cheering crowd to receive flowers and hugs all of which was recorded by the TV cameras.
In Kiev we had a 7 hour wait for the next leg of our flight.  We tried to sleep but those airport seats aren’t really set up for a good sleep.  The airport was busy with people coming and going, so we did get in some good people watching.  You would never know this country is in crisis by being at the airport.
We arrived in Amsterdam and after a hour we were settled in our quaint hotel in Badhoevedorp which is about 2km from the airport.  After a very nice meal it was off to bed by 9:30., the earliest we have been since we left home.