We're Off?

Six months ago we started talking about what we would do after we left MWSB.  For quite a few years we've wanted to travel to Europe and have talked about it often.  This seemed the perfect time to go.  Our niece, Kjersten Klass, asked to join us.  Being a school teacher, she has the summers off and so is free to travel.  We decided to make our trip 6 weeks long and to travel by train.  We punched a one month eurorail global pass which allows us to travel by train to 24 different countries.

We picked up Kjersten at the Detroit Metro airport on Thursday afternoon.  So began our adventure together.  We spent the next few days reading Rick Steve's travel book, Europe Thru the Backdoor and making lists of places we wanted to visit.  We packed our backpacks with sleeping bag, ground pad, tent and clothes.  We hope to camp most of the time we are there.

Our trip began on Tuesday morning at 6:00 am when we left Auburn, MI. in our rented car to travel to Chicago.  We arrived with no issues and early (11:30)  but that didn't last long.  We were to fly out of  Chicago at 4:00 pm and then on to Philadelphia.  Our flight to Dublin was then to leave at 9:00 pm last night.  Well, the flight from Chicago was delayed and we arrived in Philly at 9:45 pm, thus missing our flight.  This was the norm for all flights leaving Chicago yesterday resulting in a very large number of  frustrated and unhappy people in the Philly airport.  Philly was having bad weather yesterday resulting in ALOT of delays.

We spent about 2 1/2 hours trying to get a flight for today.  Mark & Kjersten had the opportunity to talk with a  "classic" (this was his definition) Orthodox Jewish man about The Lord for about 45 minutes and Gloria was able to talk with 2 gals from Montreal during that time.  We finally left the airport at about 1:30 am with a voucher for free food and a free night at the Aloft hotel.  (The sassy and savvy hotel with the cool sink)

We arrived back at the Philly airport at about 10:00 am where a very nice United employee helped us find a flight to Dublin.  Guess where we needed to fly out from?   That's right -- Chicago!  So, we got on a flight back to Chicago.  Our flight was, you guessed it, delayed due to flooding in Chicago.  We finally got to Chicago at about 4:00 pm. We then had to make our way over to terminal 5 which is set apart from the rest of the airport.   We got all Checked in with Aer Lingus.  We are now waiting for our 8:00 pm departure - which is on time.  Yeah!!!!  Europe, here we come!!!!

I'll try to download some pics later.