Don't believe anyone when they say the Internet is everywhere. Our last hotel didn't have it- unless you wanted to pay 30 dollars for seven days of access! [Actually, it was 60 Euros or about $78 - jj]
We have very sad news to bring home. Yukon passed away Sunday night. We were in a church when we got the message. The boys lit a candle and said a prayer. It was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever seen. If there weren't so many tourists walking around, it would have been a very peaceful way to say goodbye to our furry friend. It's hard to believe he's been a part of our family for 10 years. I am so sorry that we couldn't really say goodbye, and he wasn't near us at the end.
We just got home last night (morning). We left Brussels at 6:30 am, and after a tram, a metro and train ride made it to the airport. We arrived in London with time to spare, so I got some much needed alone time to browse the duty-free shops. The British pound is nearly 2-1 to the dollar- ouch!
We were late taking off in London and then when we reached JFK we had to wait about 20 minutes to even taxi to the gate. Once we reached the gate, the NY Port Authority decided they needed to stop our plane from un-boarding for some reason. Then Jack got called to the front of the plane- scared the crap out of me, I didn't know why they were calling him or where they took him. Turns out there was a question about our ticket, since Travelocity screwed it up, so Virgin had to talk to Jack. He was not being busted by the NY Police- thank god. There were quite a few "gang-banger" types on the plane that looked a little nervous for a while, though.
Once we finally got off the plane it took about 30 minutes to get through immigration. John wanted to know why there wasn't DIY check in at the border- like with our plane tickets. Our luggage all came through, but the car seats took extra long to come down the chute, so with about 35 minutes until our flight to Chicago we raced through JFK. That is the biggest, longest, farthest airport to have to get from terminal to terminal. In fact, you have to ride the tram to get to the next terminal. Since we had two different airline carriers, our luggage wasn't able to be checked through. So we had to drag it all over to American for our final flight. As we hit the ticket counter the man told us we were two minutes late for check-in for our flight. Since we had checked the boards, we knew we had gained some time- our flight was delayed. Thank GOD! We ran through security, all the way to the last gate to find that our flight was not even close to being boarded, in fact there was no plane at all in the gate. After getting our seat assignments, we sat down to wait, and wait, and wait, --- our 6:26 flight did not depart until 10:00, and then taxied until 11:15. We had now reached the 24th hour of our travels for the day. Other passengers had come from Rome, others from Madrid, needless to say we were all braindead.
Finally we got home at 2:30 am. We were all sort of awake, because it should have been morning according to our bodyclocks. The boys played in their room until about 3 am before sleeping.
They are very happy to be home and to see their friends and guinea pig. We are happy to be home and have air conditioning and a washing machine.
The big holes in our trip will have to be filled in in person.
Love,
Lisa
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