From Newark to Switzerland!

Oct 12

Oct 12 From Newark to Switzerland!

I was racing to get out of work by 3:00, and Rebecca was there in a Lyft at 3 on the dot. I surprised her with my new pink sweatsuit and was happy to see her laughing hysterically and telling the driver to “pick up the girl in the ridiculous pink outfit”. And yes, my backpack and suitcase all match.

We had a bit of trouble at check in, Rebecca’s ticket wasn’t reading TSA precheck and the lady guarding the gate was not so nice about it. Rebecca said “but I have pre-check” and the lady responded “prove it”. We had to go up to the counter and print the boarding pass, couldn’t quite figure it out.

As we went through security, my bag got flagged for a wine key (which they threw away) but there was only one man checking flagged bags so it took 10 mins waiting for him to get to mine. Then we walked to the wrong gate which was probably another 10 minutes.

Finally we made it to the United Club where a really nice lady let us use the one time club passes. We had so much fun eating the free food and drinking the free wine. They have a full bar so I asked the bartender “I’m new here, what’s free?” so we drank some cheap wine while waiting to board.

On the plane, we both have our matching leg holders—truly the best purchase ever, Rebecca’s idea—matching pillows, eye masks, our own blankets. Seasoned economy travelers :)

The good news is that the flight was much shorter then expected-6.5 hours as opposed to 8. Bad news-the plane food was disappointing. I know most people would say “duh” but I usually like the TV dinner! This was lemon chicken, mushy vegetables, a weird barley salad which had a cinnamon taste to it, cold bread, but another glass of red wine which put us both to sleep.

We slept for a short bit but were woken by turbulence. If I make a 1-10 scale with 1 being a little bumpy and 10 being so bumpy that people are screaming, I think I’ve grown tolerant of turbulence up to level 5. This was probably more of a consistent 6 with a 7 or 8 level bump here and there. And that continued for an hour and a half which mean neither of us were really sleeping. On the bright side, Rebecca held my hand the whole time so obviously it’s true love.