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Our flight from Addis to Frankfurt was accomplished mostly while the girls slept. I wish the same could be said for John and me. Unfortunately a very loud businessman right behind John and across the aisle from me decided to talk to his seatmate– loudly — for at least 4 hours of the flight. Until then I hadn’t know it was possible to talk that long with so little encouragement.
When his seatmate finally got it across that he’d rather sleep, the man still wasn’t quiet. He rustled his newspaper and cleared his throat and twitched and got up and sat down. To make it more irritating, whenever John tried to recline his seat even slightly, the man would violently push forward with his knees so that John never gained more than an inch of recline. He was truly obnoxious.
Other than that we made it to Frankfurt without incident. We deplaned out on the tarmac and were bused to the airport. Then came a very long 6 hours til it was time for our next flight. We started out at the rather dirty McDonalds play area where the little girls played awhile and the bigger girls looked around bleary-eyed and unimpressed. Then we wandered around for awhile trying to find some of the good resting places I’d read about and blogged about.
It seemed that most of them were past some security gate or other. At most of the gates you are required to both toss any liquids you might have, AND show a boarding pass to prove you have a reason to be in that particular area. After paying $8 for two bottles of water, we weren’t especially inclined to dump it out and rebuy it repeatedly. Once we found an empty gate where we stretched out, only to be kicked out 20 minutes later when it was time for passengers to enter the walled-off gate area and wait for a flight.
Finally we blearily headed back to McDonald’s where we took over a table next to a window. We discovered that the girls were big fans of chicken nuggets and French fries. While they ate, the girls watched a movie on my laptop. John and I chatted and fantasized about being home. During this whole time, though, the girls proved themselves to be really good travelers. They hung close, helped each other out, got along well, and even the little ones stayed fairly good natured.
Still, we were exceedingly glad when it was finally time to board our plane. This 10 hour flight would get us to Denver, and after that it was only a couple more hours till home. This plane was the biggest I’d ever been on. One of the girls needed to use the bathroom before we’d even taken off, and that was when I discovered that the bathrooms were downstairs– a whole block of 8 individual bathrooms, with a wide hallway between.
On this flight, we had a block of four center seats, with two seats right behind. This time John sat with the three older girls and I was behind him with the two year old. The two young men who slid in next to the two year old didn’t look terribly thrilled to discover that they were next to a toddler on a trans-Atlantic flight. I almost told them that she was usually good on planes, but I decided that would be jinxing myself.
Previous portions of this story
Sunday and Monday | Tuesday | Tuesday(later) | Wednesday | Thursday (earlier) | Thursday (later) | Friday morning | Friday afternoon | Saturday morning | Saturday afternoon | Journey home(part 1)
Amd now the real journey begins!
Thanks for the close, I have been so excited to read your posts from Ethiopia, the best read I have had in a long time