We started our journey to Vienna today, and already have lots to share about our travels. Ben and I left my parent’s house yesterday evening to stay with Ben’s parents so we would be closer to the airport on the day we leave. Chelsea came to pick us up to drive us up to Redwood City, and it took about 30 minutes to say “Bye” to my brother and Dad, hugging them and kissing them over and over, continually reminding myself that I would see them again soon, and trying to hold back the tears (my mom was going to see us off at the airport the next day). Since it took so long to say “good bye”, we were late to all our meetings that evening to see people before we left. We put all our stuff in Chelsea’s truck and both Ben and I got in the car. As Chelsea started to get into the car Murray came running across the street and jumped right into the huge truck (I still can’t believe he made that jump!). He clearly knew that something was going on and that Ben and I would be leaving. We took him back out of the car and he had the saddest look on his cute little Beagle face. The cute little Beagle face that I will miss dearly. Once Murray was back inside, we left San Jose and were on our first leg of our long journey.
That night Ben and I met up with some family and friends for dinner and dessert, to chat and say our “good-byes”, then finally headed to his parents’ house for the evening. We both went to bed fairly early since it had been a long day, and we had another long day ahead of us. We woke up fairly early after a pretty good night’s rest (considering we were moving out of the country the next day). Ben’s family started making a wonderful breakfast, and my mother and friend Chelsea were on their way up to share with us our last breakfast in America (for a while). Once the arrived we all ate, talked and just overall enjoyed each other’s company. Since we had some time after breakfast my mom, Chelsea and I all went to the mall to do some window shopping, we were back by 12 and were quickly on our way to the airport. My mother, Ben’s mother and Chelsea all stayed with us through the check in line, and right before we went in through security, we all said our tearful goodbyes, remembering that we will be seeing each other again, and trusting that God will be watching us all through this wonderful adventure.
We walked over to the security line (thankfully ours, was not the ridiculously long one!), waited patiently, then when we got to the front of the line the TSA agent wouldn’t let me through! My passport had the name “Kathryn” while my ticket said “Katie” and apparently you can’t have nicknames on your boarding pass. Awesome. So then they asked if I had any other ID that had the name “Katie” on it. So I looked through my wallet and found my old Washoe County Sheriff’s Card when I worked in Reno that had the name “Katie” and a picture of me. However, it had my maiden name on it “Bonsall”, so then I had to find ANOTHER form of ID (my old driver’s license) to show them that “Bonsall” is in fact my maiden name, and I am who I say I am. Also, just to top it off, I had to be scanned when I went through security.
Our flight was long, but we landed in Dusseldorf for our transfer of planes and I was able to get my first stamp in my passport before we continued on our trip for the last leg of our journey. When we arrived in Vienna only an hour and half later, we got our 3 bags of luggage quickly then grabbed a taxi to take us to our hotel. The trip to the hotel was interesting, first off when we told the driver where we were staying he started swearing and got really angry (apparently he was mad because our hotel was so close). Then he drove like 80 mph the whole trip there, that was a weird feeling being on a road with no speed limit! We finally arrived at our hotel then went in to town to do a little walking around and got a quick dinner with some gelato, then took the train back to our hotel to get some well needed rest. Overall, we had a great day of traveling and are glad that we are finally here!
Hahahahaha... taxis in other countries are terrifying. Cool. But terrifying.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you got there safely!