Sunday, November 9, 2014

Europe Trip: April 30 to May 2

Road Trip and Flight

On April 30 we were packed up, Monkey was at Christian's house, and we had things in order with our business and home to go on our trip. So we left about mid-day and drove down to Vegas to stay at "Hotel Fleming" with Danielle and Austin. We were able to have a nice visit with them, get a good night's sleep, and head out the next day for California. In California, we stopped at Allen and Alisa's house for lunch and a quick visit, and then Uncle Kent and Aunt Emiko drove us to LAX in our car so they could park it at Allen and Alisa's house while we were gone. Unfortunately Allen, Richard, and Cynthia were all busy and we couldn't see them on our very brief visit. We booked our trip directly from LAX to Copenhagen because it was significantly cheaper than trying to book from SLC. It was also significantly cheaper to drive down to LAX than it would have been to fly. Bonus: we got to see some friends and family on the way.
Just outside of Vegas there are these solar power plants. They have a ton of mirrors reflecting the sun to this tower full of water, which makes the water boil...and create energy. That's about all I know about them (and that might not be 100% correct either). You can google them if you're interested. They are pretty cool.


Let's back up a bit. We got an amazing deal on tickets, so round trip for all 3 of us was only $2000. We opted out of the meals on the plane to save like $50 each, and just packed a carry-on full of food. So we got to the airport, boarded our plane, and took off on our 11 hour flight to Copenhagen. A few hours in, they started handing out food to everyone, including us. So we got crappy airline food PLUS our suitcase full of snacks. I don't think we even opened our suitcase the whole flight. So we were left with a ton of snacks to use throughout our travels. Joshua slept for about half the flight, so we were also able to sleep a bit, which was nice. 
We landed on May 2, then took another short flight from Copenhagen to London. Turns out there was no public transit from that airport, so we took a bus in to Stratford. Also, no one knew where the Chigwell station was, which was comforting. We finally figured out buying Oyster cards, and hopping on the subway to get to Christin and John's house. Being at Stratford station at night was interesting. It's not the greatest neighborhood and some guy got all in my face, but there were security people right there that got on his case about it. 
When we were almost there, I suddenly remembered that it was May 2. "Happy Anniversary" I said to Dave as we struggled to stay awake. It was pretty funny that our actual anniversary was spent traveling and not even knowing what day it was because of jet lag.
We had no way of contacting Christin & John, just their address (SIDE NOTE: If you fly into England, you must know the address and phone number of where you are staying to even get past customs. Thank goodness I had remembered to ask for that before we left.). So we got to their station, and asked the station master where to go from there, and he said that John had been coming by every once in a while to check and see if we had gotten lost. Turns out their house was right across the street from the station, so that was a relief. I don't remember much else from that night except crashing on the air mattress.

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