I'm working on a couple of back-posts as we are starting to feel a little more settled in our rental cottage. Since arriving, we had to upgrade our Mac OS to use our new GPS, and apparently we still need to update our iPhoto, so forgive me that these will be image-less posts for now!
The week before leaving went quickly. We were staying at Paul's parents' new home, which was in the midst of receiving all their household goods from their old home -- life was a bit chaotic for everyone! We did our best to prep our house for Kate (Paul's sister) to move in after we leave. All our stuff is officially now: 1) in household goods shipment to England, due to arrive sometime in Feb/March; 2) in expedited goods shipment to England, due to arrive in January/Feb hopefully; 3) in a storage facility in St Louis; 4) in our suitcases; 5) staying with Kate! It was dizzying trying to remember where everything was going -- a big relief to have that part of the process complete. It was also a very strange moment when I had a completely empty to-do list before leaving.
On Saturday (1/4) we had a morning of gathering final items together and spending time with Paul's family. They took us (and all our luggage: 6 checked suitcases, a pack-n-play, stroller, carseat, and 4 carry-ons) to the airport in 2 separate cars! They were kind enough to help us through the United ticket counter line and then to the security checkpoint. The experience at the United counter was not great -- because Paul is not active military but we are technically traveling with what look like military orders ("PCS" -- permanent change of station), we encounter bizarre treatment on many levels. This time, there was confusion about how many bags we were allowed to check -- active duty military get 4 each, but we only get 3 each. That's fine -- but the lady accused us of clicking the "wrong things" on the self-service screen and forced us to re-do it 3 separate times -- involving us re-scanning our passports, etc -- before she finally came around and tried it herself and saw we had been doing it right... a little frustrating start to the trip.
Our next encounter with United personnel came on our flight from STL to Newark, when the stewardess flipped out because we were apparently assigned seats that didn't come with an extra oxygen mask (since we had a baby traveling with us, a safety concern), and also that we were trying to board with a carseat. She kept saying "This is important for safety!" in an accusatory way -- as though we had purposely chosen seats without the extra oxygen mask(?). The government picked our seats! She ended up reseating us twice -- I felt bad for the other passengers who were asked to move around. I didn't get too upset about the carseat at this point -- go ahead and gate check it for the short flight, since it was a small aircraft I could understand that it might not fit. It's a Britax Roundabout G4, which (like most convertible carseats) is pretty much a baby throne designed to fit Charlotte until she's ready for a booster seat, many years down the road! It is pretty big and heavy -- Paul did a great job hefting it around, but we might have to get some wheels for it for next time. Charlotte slept for most of the first flight in my arms, but did get perturbed by the pressure changes briefly when going up & down. I wasn't surprised as my ears were hurting a bit too on the small aircraft.
We landed in Newark and had the bizarre experience of changing terminals via a bus. I have been through many airports with many techniques for changing terminals, but this felt like we were trudging through a cold, dripping, dark, back alley at both the pick up and drop off spots. We got to our gate and Paul grabbed a quick snack for us to split, and I fed Charlotte her pre-packed meal. We didn't have much time before they announced boarding for our flight. As we were getting on, they told us we couldn't bring the carseat on this flight either! I quietly starting having a meltdown, as all my hopes & dreams for a smooth transatlantic flight involved Charlotte falling asleep, then me transferring her to the carseat so I could get some sleep myself. Without a carseat, it was hard to envision how I could get any rest at all -- constantly worrying about turbulence, her waking up & trying to jump off the seat, etc. Once we got on and found our seats, Paul returned to the front of the plane to ask the very friendly British flight attendants if we could at least try our seat -- and showed them the airplane symbol on the seat that says it's approved for flight. They said "sure!" and lo and behold, it fit (forward facing, but I felt comfortable with that... honestly I just wanted a way to keep her in the seat. It was bound to be safer than being a lap child anyway).
We took off and Charlotte was quite squirmy for the first hour of the flight, which was a little rough on already tired parents. She did settle down once they turned the lights off -- that couldn't come soon enough! -- and fell asleep, then the transfer to the carseat worked (! thank God!) and I buckled her in loosely. She probably slept for about 4 and a half hours of the almost 7 hour flight, I estimate I slept about two and a half hours. I have a tough time getting comfortable on airplanes. It was so helpful to have an overnight flight with the baby though, as it was around her bedtime when we took off so I think that helped with her sleep. We had some mild but definitely bouncy turbulence over the mid-Atlantic, which gave me a little panic as I envisioned a "Hudson-river style" landing in the water and trying to keep Charlotte alive in her baby life jacket in freezing cold water temps. I may have seen "Titanic" too many times in middle school!
We landed in London around 9:30 am local time (6 hours ahead of STL, 5 hours ahead of the East Coast). It was a little spooky as there was fairly heavy fog in London, and I truly did not see the runway until we bumped down onto it! Paul told me later that he had been watching the flight information channel (that tells you how much further you have to go, altitude, etc) and it said "31 feet" altitude just before we touched down -- he was thinking "well this could end badly" since we couldn't see anything out the windows! After we disembarked the plane, we were in the brand-new "Queen's Terminal" which was beautiful but strangely empty. We were the last ones off the plane and took a quick pit stop before heading to customs, so we were trekking through what felt like a mile of abandoned terminal with baby, carseat, stroller, and carryons. Customs was simple, and the agent barely batted an eye when we said we were planning on staying for 3 years. Then it was onto baggage claim, where things were less simple. Five of our six bags had been taken off the carousel and were waiting for us. I made many laps around the large carousel, looking in areas of abandoned luggage to try to find our remaining suitcase and the pack-n-play. After no luck, we went to the United baggage counter to find out what to do. One baggage handler then pointed me toward the large items carousel, where the pack-n-play was (yay!) but our hard-sided suitcase full of shoes -- only shoes! -- was still missing. After waiting in line, we found out that our bag had been put on the next plane from Newark (who knows why these things happen) which was arriving in 30 minutes. They said they would deliver it to us at our rental cottage that evening.
Meanwhile, we were getting anxious that all this delay might cause our scheduled pick-up to have issues. Happily, when Paul called them (just before we got in line at the United baggage counter), they told him that the driver had just phoned to ask where we were -- so they let the driver know NOT to leave and to wait for us! A very nice man was waiting for us with a "P. Hennekes" sign when we finally emerged from the baggage area, and he took us to a large van and helped load all our luggage. I installed C's carseat and we were off! He gave us lots of nice information about the parts of London we were passing through, as well as some basic highway information when Paul asked him about it. I had forgotten that despite using the metric system for nearly everything, England still uses mile-markers and mph for speed limits -- something familiar is nice when you are driving on the "wrong" side of the road. It was still fairly foggy, so it was hard to see much of the countryside. Charlotte blessedly slept pretty much the whole way. It took about an hour and 20 minutes to get from Heathrow to our "holiday cottage" near Little Gransden, Cambridgeshire. When we arrived, the proprietor, Jennie, was immediately here to greet us and let us into our new place for the next 3 weeks (at the very least).
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