Saturday, July 07, 2007

Day by Day 1-4

We started on our trip on the 19th of June. The original plan was to pick up Moneyspender and drive straight through to Dover, DE. We didn't get packed in time so we ended up about two hours late taking off. I'm a schedule kind of guy so this didn't bode well. Mapquest said that it was a 28 hour drive. We made it in 30. We started out in 6 hour shifts and had cut it to two hours by the end. It wasn't too bad with three drivers but it was nice to get there.

There weren't any flights out on the first night so we got a hotel and were in a nice room until the toilet stopped up. Nice. We had to move to another room that was clean but not as nice as the other one. Apparently they hadn't completed the upgrades. Still, breakfast was free, the beds were clean and soft and the pool was nice too. Our son, the fish, swam until they kicked him out about 11:00.

Our goal on this trip was to fly standby the whole way. We got out on the first flight to Germany the next night. It was a long flight and almost as tiring as driving half-way across the country. We quickly got a hotel and settled in for the night. We got our first inkling of the expense of taxis in Europe. It cost 24 Euro for a five mile ride. That's about $36.

The kids enjoyed one of their most memorable moments of the trip here. We went to a little bar/restaurant for dinner. It was like one of the old westerns. When we walked in, everyone stopped talking and turned to look at the funny Americans. There were some teenagers sitting at the bar and obviously drunk. After we pointed to something unrecognizable on the menu (we don't speak or read German) we were talking and one of the girls at the bar started to fall off of her stool. She realized this and grabbed onto the seat but that only caused the stool to go with her. She crashed onto the floor and smashed her head on the wall on the way down. It was hard not to laugh.

The next morning, the taxi company claimed that they had no taxis for 5 people available and sent two cars instead. We learned that many times they lie about this to get more money from you. Anyway, it cost $72 to get back to the airport. Finally we got on the first flight to England. I'll pick up there later.