We had quite an interesting 24 hours of travel. We left yesterday on the 3:10 pm Coach bus to O’Hare airport and encountered a terrible traffic jam. They had shut down the expressway and were diverting all traffic onto highway 100. It added an hour to our bus ride (so a total of almost 4 hours).

One thing that went completely right was this impulse-buy I made a few weeks before we left. They’re inflatable foot rests for the airplane and they basically fill the entire leg space with inflatable goodness. We ended up making a bed for Nova and Esme out of them. Later when I was ready to sleep, I even put my legs on them. Even later, Nova woke up and we switched seats so Asa could lay down for a while.

Anyway, our plane in Chicago was delayed and we took off an hour and a half late which then made us late to Gatwick airport in London. By the time we deplaned we had a little over an hour to walk to customs, go through customs and immigration, go to the other terminal, get boarding passes, go through security, and get to our next plane. Every step along the way, something happened to slow us down (sent to the wrong line for immigration, couldn’t print the boarding passes, we tried to rush through security and ended up getting a special screening, no gate number on our boarding passes). After rushing through the airport only to miss our plane we all felt a little defeated but especially Cal. Today Cal turned 13. (Happy Birthday Cal!) What a way to celebrate it with jet lag and carrying a heavy backpack around for hours.

Cal had moved past despair to hopelessness.

After hours of pulling my hair out trying to make alternate plans to get us to Paris today and being denied our connection insurance because we “should have had enough time to get to our connection”, we finally gave up for the day and decided to leave the airport. We booked a cheap hotel in London for the night and decided to figure out the rest after we settled in.

As soon as we left the airport I knew we had done the right thing. We felt the sunshine (even if it is colder outside than I prefer) on our faces for the first time in 24 hours.

When we were in the airport Asa asked if we were going to actually set foot in Europe today or only the airport and I laughed but later I realized it was true. The airport may have physically been in Europe but it was so much like any other airport that it didn’t feel like we even left the states yet. We got to our cab to go to the hotel and I needed to ride in the front. I opened the door I thought was the passenger-side door without remembering that the driver sits on the other side of the car and we had a good laugh. I am definitely glad I’m not going to be driving in the UK because it was freaking me out just being a passenger. It’s hard to get used to being on the “wrong” side of the road.

Our hotel is really quaint. The kids got a kick out of the vending machine choices.

After we got settled at the hotel and discussed multiple plans and scenarios based on prices and timetables, we finally decided on leaving on a 0700 flight tomorrow. That gives us plenty of time to make our train from Paris to Strasbourg tomorrow and a little time to explore Paris (albeit with bags in tow). The kids were dropping like flies before we even ate dinner so we should be plenty rested by 2:30 am, our planned réveille.

One other fun thing that happened is when the dad of a French family was asking the flight attendant of Norwegian Air for help, in French, I jumped in and helped translate. Gave me a little confidence boost before we set foot on French soil.