Advertisement
Published: January 25th 2011
Hi Friends & Family,
We’re finally off.
Yeah baby! Wooo!!
We practically didn’t sleep at all ‘cos:
1. The excitement.
2. We have to get up at 04:00 at the very latest.
3. I was doing the housework – cleaning and mopping in order to have a tranquil house of calmness after the madness of travelling all around California in under 3 weeks AND combating jetlag!
This was our first trip to North America but definitely not our last. Funnily enough, I always thought that my first trip to the USA would be to New York but due to the fact that we had TWO family tragedies in 2010 and we needed to have a holiday TOGETHER- All three of us-we opted for California instead.
A wonderful mixture of sunshine, snow, mountains, beaches, cities and rural communities. What more could be better!
Well, I couldn’t sleep AT ALL so I had a nap of 1 hour then I got moving at 03:30. I woke “The Small Young Gentleman” at 04:15 and for once, he jumped up immediately ‘cos we were on our way to the US of A!
A
quick cup of tea and a quick flurry of home-made sandwiches, we packed up our hand lugguage, said goodbye to the cat and rolled our way to the station.
We took the Ring Train from Schönehause Allee to Beusselstrasse and then the TXL airport bus to Tegel Airport.
We were flying with KLM and it was the more expensive choice LOL ‘cos I didn’t want to fly with my national airline – British Airways – ‘cos of the appalling service at Heathrow Airport.
Heathrow Airport is one of the largest airports in the world and is like a cattle market! It takes hours to get anywhere and airport staff seem to think they own the world with one strike or the other on a regular basis not to talk of natural disasters nearby; volcanoes, snow, ice, sun and goodness knows what.
No, I’ll stick with an airline closer to home. We would have flown with Lufthansa but they didn’t have available seats on the flight back so KLM it was at €200 more. Each.
We had most of the holiday organised by our local travel agent on Schönehause Allee and because of this we had
been able to save up and deposit various amounts over two years. We were going with the Germany upmarket travel company – Meiers Weltreisen”.
I’m used to travelling independently and cheaply but for once, I wanted luxury and security as I was unfamiliar with the standards of American hotels which are different to ours LOL and moreover, we had a limited amount of time and nightmares of driving into a motel or one town hotel and it ending up being a brothel, a drug-den or worse sooooo 4-star hotels is what it is right now AND I’m not ashamed people!
To be honest the fact that we had booked with a travel agent came in very handy as due to those tragedies I previously mentioned, we had actually CANCELLED our American trip and can you believe it, I had booked a British Airways flight which had been due to leave on the very first day the Icelandic volcano erupted!
You all know how passengers at Heathrow were stranded, and all over Europe was chaos and confusion. For months.
A blessing in disguise perhaps!
Anyway, enough all ready.
The US of A.
Yeah!
The flight from Tegel to Amsterdam was only an hour and a two hour stopover at Schiphol Airport took us onto a Boeing 747. I don’t believe I’ve been in one.
It was huge and looked like a cartoon.
Sort of.
I was a little nervous as our travel agent had called up on Wednesday to say that one of their customers to the US had had a problem and it wasn’t really clear why. We were leaving on Friday.
Great!
Apparantly, Frank told me that I had the air of calmness but inside I was a little worried. However, everything was absolutely fine and welcoming smiles were all around us and “have a great trip” filled the air.
Phew!
On we go.
We were on a double-decker plane too with the top floor reserved for Business and First Class Customers and the ground floor reserved for Business and Comfort Economy and Economy.
Sadly, we were in Economy LOL!
“The Small Young Gentleman” was delighted with everything.
He went crazy over the flatscreen TV as he was allowed to “do” whatever he wanted. He wasn’t so impressed with
all of the food but then what child is. He nevertheless managed to eat a reasonable amount and the air hostesses were really nice as they kept giving him extra stuff like bread rolls and biscuits and they even sneaked in a Business Class ice- cream for me as I didn’t like the cholcolate ice cream reserved for “Economy”.
They were great and the 12 hour flight went very smoothly but “The Small Young Gentleman” absolutely refused to sleep or even rest a little.
Oh Boy!
I’m prone to catching colds on planes so this time I wrapped up and kept warm, drank lots and “The Small Young Gentleman” and I did stretching and shadow exercises on the plane. What’s that you say?
Don’t ask?!
Soon enough we had arrived.
We’re h-e-r-e!
A quick line-up at passport control: How many people are in your group? Have you visited the US before? How long are you staying? How much money are you bringing in? Finger prints. Eye scans. Have a nice trip.
Five minutes top.
Welcome to America.
Smiles all around.
Surprisingly, I’m very happy to be stepping on American
soil and then,
there was a blast of sunlight as we stepped out with our trolley to take the shuttle bus that would lead us ro our rented car!
S-u-n-s-h-i-n-e.
In January and palm trees and heat and everything LOL!
Laters!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.236s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 14; qc: 63; dbt: 0.1719s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 3;
; mem: 1.2mb
Florence
non-member comment
enjoy the US, it is so great ! You will see amazing country sides and I like it to follow your trip this way :-)