Bad news: Getting home was much more of a hassle than we had anticipated.
We got to wake up in Vienna at 3:45. Finished packing and getting all organized and then meet our taxi (and our new airport friend) on the curb at 4:30. After loading our bags, and waiting for a little bit so that our friend could go get her passport, which she had forgotten, and then we drove to the airport. On the way to the airport, we realized that we needed to repack almost an entire bag due to the contents that couldn't be carried on. Haha I would go into more detail but some people who read this will be getting some of these items for Christmas. SO it's a super secret, for now. :)
At the airport, Nicole repacked and I checked us in... well tried. We went to AirFrance but apparently it was an AirFrance flight operated by Austrian Air. So we had to check in with Austrian. Which was the best part about the entire day. The guy that helped us was SO nice. He didn't care that both of out checked bags were overweight (23.8 kg for mine/24.4 kg for Nicole's). He didn't even mention it. He just put the little tags on them and sent them through. So nice. :) We then had to go and pay for our third bag which was SUPER lame because it was 75 EUROS. Boo. :( The only issue though was that he tried to check our bags straight through to SJC but he couldn't find our flight. haha he says that it didn't exist. So he just checked them through to LA. But going into the day, we knew that we were going to be stuck, at least for a while, in LA. Always a good feeling...
We then went to wait for our flight. Aka go sit right outside Starbucks until we could go through security/to our gate. In weird European airports, they have personal security for each gate... so we had to wait until it was our flight's time. But once we went through, we waited at the gate and the annoying lady tried to convince me that I needed to check my other suitcase because it weighed more than 8 kgs. I kinda went along with it because she was leaving it up to me but since I didn't really know where I was supposed to take it and because that's ridiculous, I just brought it on the plane with me and it was fine. :)
The flight to Paris was great. There was an empty seat between us, I sat at the window and they fed us a DELICIOUS chocolate chip muffin. So yummy. I also got to watch the sunrise over Austria which was beautiful. Great flight.
Once we landed in Paris, we had an hour and a half, exactly, before our flight to LA left. We had to run through the airport, find the new terminal, run down the huge airport, cut through the huge protest, and then arrive at the Border Control line. Which took FOREVER. We were in the line for a good 35 minutes before they let us cut because our flight was going to leave in 15 minutes. haha so we zipped through that, ran down the airport, got on a little train, went through security, and then arrived at our gate. We literally walked on the flight at 10:45, which is when the flight was supposed to take off. We weren't even the last ones on the plane and we didn't end up leaving for another hour and 15 minutes but it was still nice being on the plane and being able to relax. :)
Once we finally took off, it was a great flight. The food was not good, but we still ate it. We had our own tv's so we watched Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, Friends, etc. And then I took a little nap, which felt like 5 hours but it was only an hour, and then we just wasted time. I did some stuff on my computer (aka money stuff to fill out the customs form, and played solitare), and then watched Slumdog Millionare (SO GOOD.) and before we knew it, it was time to land! It didn't really feel like that long of a flight, which was weird because it was like a 12 hour flight. And we sat on the plane for an hour before we even took off. BUT the best part about the whole thing was that they had Häagen-Dazs ice cream that we got to eat on the airplane. This is a concept that I have never participated in and it DEFINITELY gave them some gold stars. Good work AirFrance. The hour before we landed though felt like FOREVER. Probably because they made us put all our fun activities away and we kept thinking that we were going to land at anymoment. Not true. It took far too long. But once we did land, it was great.
We then had to deal with our lack of airplane ride home. And we kept forgetting that we weren't in one of our airports. We walked to Passport control, where we got to wait in line for a while, and then we walked up to the desk and the guy was super nice and cool about letting us into our own country. Which is surprisingly not normal. haha But he was super nice and he made that part much better. We then waited for our luggage... that never came. So we had to report that all while trying to figure out how to get on a plane home... It turned out to be REALLY good that they lost our bags (well, not lost, just not placed on our flight) because then we didn't have to recheck them and pay. haha :)
We went to Alaska Airlines and checked in and apparently our flight had changed to 9:10 or something late but there was another flight at 5:57 that we wanted to be on but it was a $25 to change... so worth it. We basically payed $25 to get out of LA 3 hours earlier; SO worth it. haha so we went and hung out at our new gate, charged our phones while updating facebook/texting peeps and the like.
We finally boarded our little baby plane, they gate checked my bag (the best thing ever) and sat on the plane. Our last flight and it was only going to be an hour. Easy peasy. But it felt like SO long. Probably because we were so tired and done being stressed and the like but it was ridiculous how long it felt. And the funniest part was when we landed and the people behind me stood up and I heard them say "Ahhhh. Wow, it feels so good to be able to stand up and stretch our legs." To which I was thinking... "Riiiiiiiiight, because that hour long flight really takes it out of you..." By that point, Nicole and I had been flying for 15 hours and sitting in airports/traveling for 30 hours? Ridiculous.
Haha we got our gate-checked bag, headed through the little airport and then waited for our family to pick us up. They greeted us with sticky pop and red-hot cookies. Delicious.
We then drove home and ate enchiladas and they grilled us about all our adventures. Too bad our bags were still in Paris or we could've shown them all our goods. haha but then we hung out until mighty late (okay, like 10) and then we went to bed.
Andddd the good thing about jetlag is obviously waking up at 6:30 in the morning. Boo. That wasn't fun at all. haha obviously the way to begin a much productive day. :)
It's good to be home. Although I still miss this place like crazy:
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