Amy Lewis initially noticed the AAA contest on her Facebook feed.
Then, the Land O’ Lakes woman saw it again, about a month before the contest’s deadline, in AAA’s magazine.
She encouraged her 14-year-old daughter, Sky, to give it a try.
The eighth-grader, who attends Pasco eSchool, got busy doing her research and composing her submission.
She turned it in and they waited.
Amy was sitting in a doctor’s office when she got the word that Sky had been selected.
“It felt like she won the lottery. My heart was racing out of my chest,” Amy said, who couldn’t wait to get home to share the news.
Sky recalled that moment: “ We were jumping around and yelling and screaming.”
“My husband (Richard) just sat there, dumbfounded,” Amy said.
Sky was thrilled.
“They picked 60 eighth-graders for the trip, out of 800 applicants,” Sky said. (There were 13 winners in Florida, including two in Tampa.)
She was excited, but she had a dilemma.
“She had to pick a chaperone. She was so upset,” her mom said. “She couldn’t choose.”
Her dad saved the day.
“He saw that she was upset. He stepped up,” Amy said.
Richard told Sky: “‘There’s no question. You and your mom are going,’” Amy said.
Preparations for travel begin
Once they knew they’d be making the trip, they got busy.
“We needed big puffy coats,” Sky explained, noting the Netherlands gets much colder than Land O’ Lakes.
“We don’t own those kinds of clothes,” Amy added.
They hit thrift stores to assemble their winter wardrobes.
They also needed passports: AAA took care of that.
In fact, AAA partnered with AmaWaterways and Allianz Global Assistance to cover all of the costs of the nine-day, all-inclusive trip.
Sky and Amy departed from Tampa International Airport on March 11 — which just so happened to be Amy and Richard’s 23rd anniversary.
“So, he drove us to the airport. He was like, ‘Happy Anniversary — bye,’” Amy said, with a laugh.
Sky had traveled to places such as Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, but she’d never been out of the country before, had never been on an airplane and had never taken a cruise.
They jetted from Tampa to Atlanta to Amsterdam, meeting some members of their travel group in Atlanta, and the rest of them when they arrived in Amsterdam.
Their travel group was dubbed Discovery Crew, and they journeyed on the Amalucia, during an AmaWaterways river cruise. They followed a custom-designed itinerary, with ports of call and excursions focused on local history, science, nature and food, according to a AAA news release.
Each morning, tour guides led the travelers — sharing the sights, sounds and history of Dutch culture.
A jam-packed itinerary
There was so much to see and do, they headed out early in the morning and often didn’t wrap up the day until late evening, Sky said.
They had breaks for meals and a smidgen of personal time, too.
The pace was brisk.
“We were running some of the time. They were going so fast,” Sky said.
They barely had time to take photos and sometimes the itinerary was so tight they couldn’t even finish lunch, before heading off on another excursion.
At the end of each day, they were exhausted.
“The second we hit the pillow. We were just done. Every night,” Amy said.
Before the trip, Sky had pictured Holland primarily as a place of windmills and tulips. And, in her mind’s eye, Amsterdam was more rural in nature, instead of being the big city that it is.
Sky was surprised by the relative lack of cars and the hordes of bicyclists — racing past at breakneck speeds.
“The bikes have the right of way — over pedestrians and even cars,” Sky said. “They told us: ‘Be careful for the bikes. They’ll run you over.’”
Both Sky and Amy were fascinated by the housing, the architecture and the historic landmarks.
“They don’t have sprawling space like our country does. There aren’t houses with yards and gated neighborhoods. It’s all high and tight,” Amy said.
Some homes date back to the 1400s, and people live on houseboats because there’s nowhere left to build, Amy added.
Plus, there are canals everywhere.
Both Sky and her mom thought they might encounter language barriers, but that didn’t happen.
“We had downloaded a translating app, so we could talk to them. We didn’t use it at all. Most people spoke English,” Sky said.
And, while they dined on foreign food, it wasn’t Dutch. They took advantage of the French cuisine served to them, as part of the all-inclusive package, on the Amalucia.
“We got to try lots of new things,” Amy said, noting they particularly enjoyed the bread and desserts.
Sky added: “One of the nights they had a chocolate buffet. They had chocolate fountains.”
Memorable places, people
The trip included a visit to the Anne Frank House, the place where Anne Frank and her family hid, and where she wrote her famous diary.
The Franks, another family and a single man hid in a secret annex, from 1942 until 1944, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.
A year after they were discovered, Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
But Anne’s diary survived and bore witness to life during those times.
Sky said she saw where Anne and the others hid and the bookcase that swung open to their hiding place. Sky and other students in her tour group also saw where Anne slept and the desk she used, when she wrote in her diary.
Other trip highlights included a chance to learn about the craft of lace tatting, chocolatier tours and a chance for the students to meet their Dutch peers.
The group also visited windmill and tulip farms.
They stopped at Pilgrim Fathers Church, the final prayer site for the pilgrims before they set off for the “New World.”
Their travel group included people from big cities and little towns, wealthy people and people of moderate means. There was a good mix of moms and dads on the trip, too.
Beyond expanding their horizons, the memories and the mementos — Amy and Sky said they both returned from their trip with something else of great value, too.
“We both met some nice friends,” Amy said.
Published May 31, 2023
