Aug 14 – Leaving St Louis

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Today is departure day – the trip begins! Over the previous weeks we have gotten very excited in anticipation of today, but it is finally here. Yesterday was very busy with last minute stuff. The bags have been packed and repacked several times as we try to decide what to take. The cruise ship would happily allow us as much luggage as we wanted to bring, but that pesky airline has a more punitive baggage policy which requires careful selection of only the essentials. The final choices have been packed (one bag mostly packed with what we will not need until the ship and the other for the things we expect to use in London) so we are all set - both under 50 pounds.



David performed a last minute mowing of the yard Tuesday, Janet had a farewell Yoga session this morning, and now we are off to the airport. Thanks are extended to our friends, Ken and Terry Schmalbeck for shuttling us to the airport. The girls are both busy today so this kindness it is very much appreciated. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time to perform the flight check-in routine and TSA rituals before our 5:30 flight to Chicago. There was a little concern about getting the carry-on bags into an over-head compartment, but that turned out to be no problem afterall. Our flight was pretty crowded but otherwise that part of the trip was uneventful. We arrived at O’Hare on time, and out next flight leaves just 4 gates down the concourse. In between was a small food court where we got a couple of pre-fab sandwiches to eat before making our connection on the 9:45 flight to London. Yes, there will be a meal on the overnight flight, but it is going to be served very late for our normal dinner (probably around midnight).



Maybe we seem kind of blasé about hopping on a jet for an international destination, but it all is going well today. That’s good because sometimes things do not go as planned (Elizabeth and Mike had a very difficult time trying to get to England earlier this year) and that would cause problems to our London plans. We are aware that the State Department has issued an international travel alert for August, but we do not plan to go anywhere near the Middle East nor North Africa. If we stay in our tour groups we expect to be fine – maybe a little tighter security checks, but that should not be a problem.



The other BIG NEWS is that today is the first day of school for Alex and Abby Chinn. Alex is going into 3^rd Grade and Abby is having her first day of Kindergarten. They are both really excited - especially Abby. We hope they both had good days!



There are a couple of interesting web sites that you might like to explore while we are on our vacation. The first is one which will allow you to follow our progress once we board the ship. It will show both the location of our ship and hopefully the “view from the bridge” during the cruise:



http://www.seascanner.com/schiffsposition.php?schiff=Crown+Princess



Another convenient web site is this one which will provide the local time and local weather, wherever you want. So if you are tracking our progress through Europe, you can see how much difference there is between you and us (probably about a third of a day and several degrees of temperature).



http://www.worldtimeserver.com/



That’s about all for today. Assuming the “check engine” light does not come on during the flight (like Elizabeth’s), then in the morning we will land in England, and the story should start to get more interesting.

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