The Tale of the Marvelous Journey – Part 2: DFW to LGW

In DFW we scoped out a row of seats that faced the windows and were mostly in the shade. The kids played with their happy meal toys (from “Cars” which doesn’t come out here until July 28) and we waited.

And waited.

We boarded the plane ½ hour late because of mechanical difficulties and waited.

And waited some more.

After a while, we heard from the captain as to why we were still sitting on the tarmac. Turns out the paperwork hadn’t been completed on the mechanical difficulties. Then we waited some more. The captain came back on and said more paperwork needed to be done correctly on the dry ice that was in our cargo hold. Finally after 1 ½ hours, we took off.

We were in the middle section – 5 seats across. Me, Audrey, Mom, Caleb, then Steve. Julie sat with all 3 adults at different times during the flight. Mom & Steve switched places at one point to help me with the girls. Caleb and Audrey enjoyed watching Cartoon Network, but the 3 adults watched “Two and a Half Men,” “CSI:NY,” “Casablanca,” “Firewall,” and “King of the Hill.” Strange selection, in my opinion.

All 3 kids ate dinner and slept well. It took Audrey a little while to get to sleep. I actually had to hold her still, but she didn’t complain and it worked. I dozed a little, Steve had short and fitful sleep, but Mom couldn’t sleep at all.

The kids all did very well on the flight. Julie didn’t cry much (just a little when she was sleepy), Caleb and Nana played or read together pretty much the whole trip, and Audrey had a short attention span, but fortunately I had more than enough toys and diversions to keep her occupied.

The lady across the aisle from me commented several times on how great the kids traveled. I just wanted to not be “that person” who had “those kids” that every person on every flight dreads.

We arrived only an hour later than we were supposed to – 9 a.m. London time. Two a.m. our time. Imagine the 6 of us staggering off the plane last (except for an Indian family with more children and more grandparents) and looking for the strollers and backpack we had gate-checked in Dallas. They were nowhere to be found. Turns out they didn’t make the flight across with us. But the good news was that since our flight was so late leaving, the next flight was due in 45 minutes. I was very relieved.

By the time we got everyone cycled through the restrooms and then got down to customs, the population of the whole airplane was queued up in front of us. A lady who was the “line monitor” for lack of a better term, let us jump the queue and go straight up to the first class line to get through customs.

And we had another little mini-adventure.

The customs agent was cranky, in my opinion. He accused someone of being “very clever” because our tickets home are dated 1 day shy of 6 months. If we were to be here for 6 months, we would all have to have visas. He just kept saying someone was “very clever” and then asked to see our return tickets home. Finally he stamped all 6 passports and we were through to collect the 10 suitcases and 3 carseats that we hoped had made it across with us.

We grabbed 2 trolleys and started finding our bags. After we found 6 of them, it became obvious that we would need more trolleys. We ended up with 4 trolleys stacked with all of the stuff. About the time we got everything situated on the trolleys, the strollers and backpack showed up. There was a collective sigh of relief from the 3 adults.

Pushing one trolley and pulling another, Steve led our caravan. I had Julie in a front pack and I followed him. Mom and the kids brought up the rear, all 3 pushing the last trolley. It was a relatively short walk to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, where you can guess what we did for the next hour or so…yup, we WAITED.

When it was all said and done, Steve had loaded everything into the new van and we were ready to head out. I don’t know if the guys at the rental place were more amused or impressed with Steve’s ability to pack everything into that van. They didn’t think it could be done.

Next installment: Windsor!