Everyone and everything is on a detour

It was time for us to go to Europe but as lately has been the case, things have gone a bit differently as planned. Here’s what happened on this cross Atlantic flight.  

Before I get into that story, I just wanted to highlight some of the things we did in Miami on our second visit other then Doctor and hospital visits. We stayed in three different apartments (we are up to around 60 different locations, but I’ll tally them up later in the trip), we went swimming, went in the buildings’ saunas and took some well needed rest time. We also visited a really nice big bookshop that had a good vibe, nice food and was a very good way to get out of the heat. Of course, my brother tried some spray cheese and other “culinary delights” like a Philly cheese and steak bun, the verdict is healthy eating is pretty good in many ways, I guess he learns from experience.

On the day of our flight we had an early morning, wake up at 5 am to get the 7 am train to the airport. All went well through security, we had some food and boarded the plane around 1 pm. There we sat in the plane for about 2.5 hours, we couldn’t leave although the plane was ready to go. The reason we couldn’t leave was because there was a storm above Dallas which was our stop over location.

Our original flight was Miami à Dallas a short stop over then Dallas à Amsterdam. This storm above Dallas was going to be the storm that in hindsight put everyone and everything going on a detour. After 2.5 hours they cancelled the flight for which we were already sitting in the plane, the storm far away from us was causing havoc for the airport and they were behind schedule for us to be able to land if we took off. I have to say that was the longest time I have ever sat-on a plane and have gone nowhere. It was an understandable decision though, at Dallas there were over 50 planes that where unable to land and would take a very long time to clear up.

As the flight got cancelled, the airline’s AI booked us automatically on another flight via Nashville à London à Amsterdam, the only problem was that we as Australian’s need Visa’s to enter the UK (a relatively new phenomena) this would take at least 3 days and we would arrive there within 12 hours. We knew not board that flight and instead speak to customer service, they were however very busy. Once we got off the plane, David ran around the airport for hours to find someone to speak to, to book us an alternative flight not via the UK, the problem was we had about a hundred people in front of us. By the time we found someone to talk to our bags were on their way to Nashville and we had to stay another night in Miami. We got vouchers for a meal at the airport and a hotel paid for, instead of going via the UK we would now fly to Amsterdam via Philadelphia the next day.

Below is a map of what actually happened:

Take 2

The next day we woke up at 4:30 am got the bus to the airport, went through security and got on the plane at 6 am on our way to Philadelphia. Once we arrived in Philadelphia, we got a train from the airport to the city to explore and make use of our 6-hour stopover.

We got to see Benjamine’s Franklin’s grave, Philadelphia City Hall with a statue of William Penn and a street called chestnut street (we might use chestnut as someone’s nickname in the SQAD group). After a lovely day in Philadelphia, we boarded the plane and with a reasonably short flight of 6.5 hours we arrived in Amsterdam. We knew already that our two large suitcases had gone on their own individual trip to Nashville without us so these would arrive later (days later it turned out). From Amsterdam we jumped on a train to Bunnik the closes train station to my Opi and Nana’s (my grandparents) place. Once we arrived, we had lunch with Opi and Nana, David went to sleep, my brother and I stayed up to go out with Tyqua (the dog I will tell you all about in future blogs). All of us were tired for days but we had arrived in Europe and could rest up a bit. Later that evening, my brother was so tired he fell asleep with his laptop open, him still sitting up right, my mum had to lay him horizontal for the night.

In my next blog I’ll tell you more about Europe and especially the Netherlands which is part of my heritage.