Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica got me up around nine thirty this morning.  My job today is to get suited up and hike the nine kilometres that it takes to get from our little village to the city where the car rental place that we were told about is located.  It was getting close to noon when I finally was ready and actually set out to begin my long walk.  The girls were still very, very asleep when I set out.  They are not adjusting to Eastern European Time in any way at this point.

It was cold today but not as bitterly cold as yesterday.  Very overcast, though.

I started walking north.  Thankfully the road to take is super simple.  We live on the road that turns into the main road of Rethymno (Google calls it Rethimno incorrectly, and the real name is Ρεθύμνης according to the city’s official page.)  From Prines the next village is only about two kilometers, if that.  That was very fast.  I was there in a matter of minutes.  I found two markets very quickly but the only ATM was all the way on the far side of the village so it took me a while to get there.  I stopped in the first market just to look around and see what there was so that I would be prepared for later.  At the ATM I loaded up on cash.  This was the emergency “must do” task of the day.  No matter what else there had to be cash or we had no means of getting groceries of any sort and we are very close to being out of food at this point.  There is almost nothing to eat.

It started to drizzle by the time that I was at the very first village.  It is going to be a very wet day.

The next village was quite close again.  More markets and bakeries.  Lots of little businesses and tight streets.  Each village was down the hill towards the shore.

After the second village I had a bit of open walking as I came into highway intersections and needed to walk on the E75 which turned into the city’s main drag.  I got to see a lot of the city coming in this way.  I have a pretty good idea of what the downtown area is like.

By this time it was a light rain.  I had a light fleece and my baseball cap but nothing else.

On the east (the far) side of downtown I turned north to go into the old town.  I am so glad that I did this.  There was a lot to see.  This is one of those awesome, ancient European cities with a very old part of town to wander and get lost in on a sort of peninsula sort of thing to the north of the main city.  It was a really gorgeous walk and I hope to be able to bring the family down here to do some exploring soon.  Lots of neat stuff around every corner.  I even stumbled on the shop that made the loukoumi in Athens!  I had read the box and knew that it was made on Crete (after I had bought it) but that I stumbled on the actual shop that made it on my first time out was pretty surprising.  And that I recognized the name walking past it on a tiny little back street in the Rethymno old town too!

I popped out at the top end of the marina on the east side of the peninsula only knowing that the car rental place was supposed to be along the marina somewhere.  This ended up working out really well because I got to walk the entire “strip” along the waterfront where all of the restaurants and high end shops are.  It was hopping, even for a Sunday afternoon in the rain with it being pretty cold.  The restaurants were very busy and there were people everywhere.

I finally got through the line of restaurants and found the car rental place, Greenways.  But when I checked the door, it was locked!  Oh no!  Nine kilometres of walking and I really wanted a car in which to drive back home.  There was a number on the door but I tried calling it and just got an automated message in Greek that I could not understand in any way.  I was texting Dominica and sent her a picture of the phone number on the door and somehow she manage to get a hold of someone and found out that the person who was supposed to be managing this branch today was out sick and since they usually go all day without getting any customers at all they were leaving it closed.  Since I had walked in, someone drove in to meet me there.

I ended up renting a rough shape but serviceable (thus far) Kia Picanto in blue for $900 total for the next three months.  That’s pretty cheap for an all inclusive car with unlimited kilometres (there is only so far to be driving on the island), insurance, taxes and everything.  We were pretty happy with that.

The car was out of gas when I got into it so I had to fill up on the way out of town.  I stopped at a BP but it was closed. This was a little scary, I don’t know enough of the area to be driving around looking for petrol stations on my first time driving in the country and my first time driving this kind of car (which, by the way, is insanely difficult to drive and literally painful because of the long throw clutch) and not knowing the area at all.  This could be very bad, very quickly.  Thankfully the next, and only other, BP station was open and I got the car fueled up.  Crete (and maybe all of Greece) is a “they pump it for you” country, unlike Spain.  You have to get used to this in every country.

The drive back home was quick and easy.  It was still raining but not hard.  It was nearly four when I got back to the house and parked by the church down the street.  I had meant to stop at the nearest of the larger markets on the way back but I did not see it and was nearly to the house at that point so just went home before going back out to find food.

Dominica and I tried walking down to the two markets in Prines and found both of them closed!  Uh oh.  Not good, we have no food.  I jumped in the car and drove through the next two towns and all of the markets were closed so I went all the way to the outskirts of Rethymno to go to the big German Lidl store there and… yes it too, was closed.  This is bad.

I texted Dominica that as I was heading to the Lidl that I had seen someone come out of the corner store and told her to run down there and see if they were open now.  So she dashed down there and I raced up to Violi Charaki where I had seen a high end bakery and pastry shop still open as I drove by.  Thankfully they were still open and I ran in and got two loaves of bread that looked amazing.  Dominica texted me that she had gotten into the corner store and needed me there right away as she had no money.  So I dashed out and up through Atsipopoulo to Prines and ran in to shop with Dominica.  I made great time.

We got to talk to the owners of the shop a little bit.  They asked about us as they had seen us two days in a row now and there are very few people in Prines.  We said that we were going to be living here, and just behind the market, for the next three months.  They were very excited and welcomed us as the new villagers.  The wife of the owner ran back and made us a plate of Christmas cookies and New Year’s Cake for us to take home, too!  Everyone here is so nice.  We are loving Greece for sure.

We went home with eighty Euros of groceries and are no longer in a panic.  We have enough food so that Dominica can do basic cooking, at the very least.  And we have a car and money now, as well.  Now we can relax.

I was starving by this point.  No food, whatsoever, for me today and a lot of walking done.  Liesl was awake but Luciana was not up yet!  The jet lag has really gotten her.

Dominica made tortellini for dinner and we had butter on some of the amazing bread that I had found.  After dinner we just relaxed.  I have a terrible sinus infection that has really caught up with me today and I am very under the weather.  All four of us bundled into the living room and we played video games all evening.  I finally got a chance to play a bit of Fallout 3.

Dominica reached out to the people from whom we are renting the house about the radiators that have not been working.  They walked us through how to use the radiators and kept telling us that we just needed to flip a switch and that no tools were needed and we could just not figure out how this could be.  Dominica even watched a lot of YouTube videos to try to figure this out but no luck.

We tried an experiment this evening in Dominica going to bed around two and me offering to sleep in the girls’ room if they would go to bed early.  The girls said that they were excited and would go to bed early.  Luciana was especially keen on the plan.  But once we had to go to bed around three and they had to actually try to fall asleep it ended up in arguing and a fight and Luciana stormed out and tried to sleep with Dominica then tried to sleep on the couch downstairs and eventually kicked me out and the girls slept in the loft and I went back to my own bed.  They ended up staying up for many hours which is a real problem.  They are going to sleep through tomorrow again.

Dominica and I have to be up at nine tomorrow because the owner of the house is coming by to look at the radiators.

After all of those trials and tribulations we are very, very thankful and somewhat incredulous that this morning, well really this afternoon, we are waking up in our new home on Crete in the village of Prines.  It was three o’clock when we finally got out of bed.  We really, really needed the sleep.  Thirteen hours of sleep for me!  Unfortunately anytime that I sleep that long, because of the CPAP, it is basically guaranteed that the stress on my sinus will result in a sinus infection and I feel a little under the weather today.

We woke up to the sound of a phone ringing.  But it is an ancient Greek rotary phone and the sound was nothing that I expected to hear from a phone.  It rang a lot before we figured out what it was.  I ran down to the office and answered it.  It was Sofia (after whom Villa Sofia is named), she wanted to know if they could stop by around four to give us a tour of the house.

So everyone was up, dressed and roughly cleaned up around four.  Sofia and her son, who had let us in last night, came by and gave us the grand tour, walked us through everything that they could.  It turns out that Sofia has lived in New York and has actually been to Perry, of all places!

My first order of business was to go down to the middle of town and look for supplies.  We have a few Euros but very little money and need a few basics like bread and toilet paper.  I went to the corner store right next to us and it appeared to be closed.  So I walked on and found another tinier store that was open and I was able to get a very super basic things like the toilet paper (the only pack that they had there!) and a loaf of bread.  We were pretty desperate.

I came home and we just ate bread with oil for dinner.  The girls ate leftover snacks from the flight bag.  We are operating pretty lean today.

After we ate Dominica and the girls came down with me and we found the closer market, the one right below the house, open so we stopped in and got a few more basics.  Luciana was so excited that there were Kinder Joy (the local name for the Kinder Suprise eggs) here.  So we let the girls each get one eating up the bulk of our remaining cash.

So the first order of business was for me to walk to the next down, Atsipopoulo, where there is supposed to be an ATM and a bigger market.  I set out walking and made it maybe a kilometre at most before I decided that I had to turn around.  The road was very narrow, traffic was surprisingly heavy and it was pitch dark so that I could not see the road at all and absolutely no driver could see me on the road.  It was incredibly dangerous to the point where I risked just falling off of the road and would almost certainly be clipped by a car.  There were no shoulders and often houses, fences or walls right against the road so there was no way to even step off of the road for safety like I normally do.  This would not work at all.  Back home I went.

We hooked up the video game rig tonight and got it working and played some video games before turning in for the night.  Our day was spent almost entirely in the dark having slept so much.  We can’t wait to get over the jet lag and hopefully tomorrow we will have money and maybe even a car.

The radiators upstairs are not working.  It is very cold up there.  The main floor has radiant floor heat which is amazing with the tiles.  So comfortable.  But the heat does not reach the second floor at all.

Tonight Liesl decided to sleep upstairs in the loft but Luciana decided to sleep down on the couch in the living room.  Ciana is so weird.

We did not have the luxury of sleeping in this morning even though we were so exhausted.  We had to be on the nine o’clock shuttle from the hotel to the airport and that meant being awake around eight, getting the troops ready, everything packed up and out the door and down to the lobby well before nine.

We actually did an amazing job and were down in the lobby quite quickly.  Everyone was really dragging, but we were moving along well.  Dominica checked out and I staged the luggage that we had by the security scanner (it is common in many countries to have metal detectors at the entrance to finer hotels now.)  While we were waiting the girl who was working the front door looked at our unhappy Luciana and took her over to see the Christmas gingerbread house display and was picking up the Santa figurines and stuff to show to her.  That helped a little.  Then she took her over and let her pick out Christmas cookies for her and Liesl.  That made her a very happy Ciana.

We got on the nine o’clock shuttle and were off to the airport which was only five minutes away.  And thus began the next, long ordeal of our trip.

Once at the airport we were right through security, that was easy, and off to wait for our flight, which was for noon.  Because of all of the issues and because it is an international flight we wanted to be there with plenty of extra time to be sure that nothing could go wrong.  Our gate was not announced for a few hours so we started the day by going to a restaurant near one of the announcement boards and having a nice, long breakfast on the inside of security in the terminal where we could relax.

Dominica had French toast which Luciana finally tried and actually really liked after a year of her telling us that she would not like it.  Argh.  Liesl ordered a plate of eggs which she liked very much.  I got the “Ege Tost” or Aegean Toast which was a grilled vegetarian sandwich which was very good.

A young woman sitting at the table behind us who had touched Luciana’s hair as she walked by (everyone loves kids in Turkey) came over to the table to give Kinder chocolates to the girls and to coo over them a little.  She was very sweet and it made the girls very happy.  Everyone has been so nice in Turkey.  When she and her husband went to leave while we were still there she came over and blessed the girls quickly before they left.

We sat for a long time as our gate was never listed.  But the restaurant filled up so we moved on and found that gate 213 has almost no one at it so the girls set up camp there and played for a long time while I kept checking with announcement boards, watching Google and FlightStats and walking all over the airport looking for supplies.  Our flight was initially delayed for one hour but just before it would have been time to board it was delayed another fifty minutes.

We had been able to reschedule our Aegean flight but our window was rapidly closing with these delays and we could easily miss it, again.  My stress level was getting higher.

At around the time we would need to board our flight Google and FlightStats showed our gate as being 201, but the “official” boards never showed this.  I kept waiting for info until it was really too late to make the stated flight.  Once the emergency time had passed they finally announced gate 307 so we, like many other people, raced to gate 307 – only to find a gate worker who knew nothing whatsoever about our flight and was trying to arrange people for a flight to Moscow!  Our flight time came and went with the official status online and on the boards still being that the flight was “already past time” and at gate 307.  Ridiculous.  The crowd at the gate was huge and they were completely unable to get anyone official or with information to come to the gate but no one could go off in search of more information because their flight might board and leave without notice as we had no info at all.  The only thing that we had was the fact that there were hundreds of us gathered at the same gate, looking for the same info, stuck together.

Finally, long after we were supposed to have flown according to the official boards, someone yelled that we were moved to gate 304 and boarding and we all ran to 304 and yes, we really boarded the plane!  Absolute insanity.  No one ever apologized or explained what had happened. It was a total mess and we have no idea how we would have made the flights if we had not all been talking together and I don’t have any idea how that one person figured out that we needed to go to 304.

Once on the plane, and thankfully this one had air working unlike the Boeing 777 that lack air, we sat at the gate for a while, then drove around the tarmac for an hour, then arrived back at the gate for some time.  We never found out what happened but we sat at the gate for quite a long time.  Eventually the plane did manage to take off but our delays just extended more and more with them never announcing most of them.  The board never said longer than 110 minutes of delays but the actual delays were something like four and a half hours!

Once in the air the flight went really well.  It varies between one hour and one and a half hours between Istanbul and Athens.  After the long flight yesterday, this seemed like it didn’t even happen.  There was barely time to feed us, but they did.  Turkish Air does have great meal service.  And the girls got goody bags that were really neat with blow up airplanes, airplane binoculars and activity books.  Air Turkey does an awesome job in the air even if their airport service is extremely problematic.

We landed in Athens without any problem.  We stepped out into the airport and, surprise surprise, almost no one got their luggage.  So few people got it, in fact, that no one was even sure if the luggage had been brought out.  So everyone just stood around the belts until long after they had turned them off and stopped delivering baggage because it was as if they had not even started yet.  We had five pieces of luggage and not one had come out.  Everyone that we had been talking to did not get their luggage either.

Eventually Dominica and the girls camped out by the luggage belts in case it started up again as we had no information and I went to find the lost luggage center so that I could look into having someone look for our bags.

The tough part here was that when we landed there was time for us to make our Aegean flight to Chania.  It was going to be cutting it close and an incredible race but we could have just made the flight.  But because of the luggage not being there for us we missed the flight and missed it dramatically.  Dominica tried to change the Aegean flight times but because we had been delayed on the tarmac and in the air rather than with information when we needed it, our window for changing the flight had closed and we were unable to do that.  This just got worse and worse.

The luggage line was hours long.  I was lucky to be in the front hour of the line but it easily stretched for two or three hours behind me.  It was insane.  After an hour or so they announced that they actually did have peoples’ luggage and just had not sent it out on the belt.  We were less than happy.  They were letting people with different seat classes budge the line for lost luggage and they had been intentionally withholding out luggage.  The Athens ground service had chosen to have us miss our flight and had hidden the information that we needed from us.  Not happy, at all.

It took easily another forty five minutes until we actually had our luggage.  From there we ran through customs and out to the ticketing agents and explained to Aegean what had happened with their partner’s flight (it was a conumbered Turkish / Aegean flight operated by Air Turkey but we had booked the flights separately) and they were awesome.  The charged us the eighty Euro rebooking fee but that was way better than making us buy completely new tickets and they put us on the nine o’clock flight, the last flight of the day, out to Chania on Crete.  We had to rush but they said that we would have no problem making it.  From this point on, everything went smoothly.  Aegean was awesome and really made an effort to make everything work. And no luggage weight issues or count issues or carry on issues either.  Aegean rocked this flight for us.

We raced through check in, dropped off our luggage, got through security, got to the gate and had a few minutes for the girls to go back with me to look at a snack stand for some last minute treats for the flight.  Luciana wanted chips.  And I found some loukoumi or Greek Delight made by Greek Horizons that looked awesome, so I grabbed some.  We got back to the gate and got on the plane almost right away.  We ended up getting the entire front row for me and the girls and Dominica got a seat right behind us with no one beside her.  It was perfect.

The flight took off straight away, no issues.  They came around immediately with New Year’s Cakes (that is a big tradition in this part of the world) and champagne for everyone.  It was really nice.  They even came up and asked Luciana, as the youngest passenger, at least up front, to pick the lucky person from the passenger list.  Ciana was very shy.  They could not do the coin in the cake like you normally do so did this instead.  I did not hear what they gave away to the winner.

Luciana had to use the potty and since it was an airplane it got to be me that went and helped her.  Dominica was very happy that it happened here.

The flight was so fast that they barely had time to hand out the cake before we landed!  It was maybe fifty minutes in the air, total.  So fast.  We flew into Chania and were off the plane quickly and down to collect our luggage.

All of our luggage came right out, this time.  No issues at all.  And the luggage handlers here actually stopped by to make sure that everything was okay and that nothing was missing when I sat down with the girls for a minute while Dominica was in the rest room.  Talk about going out of their way to take care of us!

We were out into the airport in no time.  This was all super fast.  We stepped out to the panic that no taxis were visible and it looked like all of the car rental places had closed!  Oh no!

We found a Hertz that was still open for just two more minutes.  He had a car for us but not one big enough to hold all of our luggage.  This could be a disaster.

I ran outside again and managed to find a taxi.  I talked to him and he said that we would fit so we hauled all of our luggage over to him and for half an hour he tried to figure out how to cram all of our luggage into his car.  Eventually he got a friend to help him and they ended up using a bungie cord to hold the trunk lid closed with our luggage spilling out.

It was ninety Euros and about an hour to Prines.  We were so glad to be out of airports and off of airplanes and on our way to our new home that we did not care at all.  It was completely dark so we got to see nothing of Crete, sadly.  Our original plan had been to arrive in daylight and get to see an hour of the island before getting to our home.  Oh well.

The son of the home owners was waiting by the side of the road and watched us drive by.  He texted Dominica and we figured out from that where to go.  We parked by the church and unloaded all of our luggage by the side of the road, I paid the cab driver and he was off.  Dominica got the kids up to the house while I worked on getting the luggage staged into an alley.

It took a couple trips to get all of our luggage up to the house and the one really weak and ugly larger bag had its handle not survive the trip.  I don’t think that it can even go on from Crete with us, it will need to be replaced while we are still here.

Finally, around eleven thirty we were into the house!  It was by the skin of our teeth but we made it into the house, the Villa Sofia, on the same day that we had originally planned and the first day of the new year.  It is a good omen, we are getting the new year started in our new home in a new land.  We are very excited.

We got a quick tour of the house.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  Jaw dropping gorgeous.  It is even better than the pictures had shown and we can’t even see much of it because it is dark out and the patio and terrace and all of the views cannot be seen.  Everything in the house is perfect and brand new.  It turns out that no one has ever lived here and all of the work was very recent.  It rarely gets rented in the winter so it had been all closed up although they had come and gotten it all prepared for us.  We are going to love this house.

There is a bedroom with two single beds downstairs that we suspect that we are going to regear as a video gaming room with the projector once we get settled in.  The girls found the bedroom with a second floor loft that they are super excited about sleeping in.  There is a master that is perfect for Dominica and me.  There is a bathroom on the first floor and one on the ground floor.  The terrace is between the first and second floors.  The patio is, of course, on the ground.  The pool is empty as it is very cold, no way that we will be using that.  There is an out building with the boiler and other utility items.  We have a full laundry room, too.  Outside there is a wood fired adobe oven.  We have a wood burning fireplace in the living room, too.  The house has a single HD television in the living room, not huge but perfect for hooking up the Amazon Fire TV and we will use it for watching shows and light gaming on that.  All of the appliances are super high end Stainless steal and wood panel in exactly the wood finish that I love.  Everything in the house is light tile, marble and glass.  I love it.  There is even an office loft for me that overlooks the living room!  The giant stone arch in the middle of the living room and dining area is amazing and obviously original (Ottoman Occupation era.)  Even at night the house is brightly lit which is awesome after we have been stuck in so many places with nearly no light leaving us useless after dark.

We hooked up the Amazon Fire TV and watched a little of Liesl’s new favourite movie Transylvania 2 that Dominica had bought for this trip for her.  The Internet connection worked well and is much faster than we are used to, even in the States.

We did not watch for long.  We were just excited to be able to sit down, have Internet tested out, see the Fire TV working in Greece and relax.  We called it a night very quickly getting to bed not long after midnight.  We are completely exhausted and ready to collapse.

As always it is very hard to figure out where one post should end and the next begin when you are dealing with things like “up all night” overnight flights and such.  We were in the air for three hours when midnight rolled around making it New Year’s Eve.  The girls managed to sleep for a good portion of the flight and watched shows for a good chunk of it, too.  Dominica could not sleep at all because it was so warm.  She was feeling awful the entire way.  Almost sick the whole time.

During the flight I managed to watch a lot of movies.  I watched enough movies that my eyes and ears were in pain from the close up screen and the cheap headphones.  I watched several movies that I have been wanting to see like Anchorman 2, Blades of Glory, Vacation and Kingsmen.  International flights are great for this and I get in nearly all of my desired movie watching by doing this.  It kind of works out.  It also works out great that Dominica watches completely different movies than I do and gets to see lots of films that I have no desire to have to sit through.  So it is a double bonus for me.  Liesl watched Transylvania twice and then watched Transylvania 2 twice.  Liesl sat in the middle and Luciana sat on the other end of the row beyond Liesl so I did not have good visibility into what shows she was choosing.

We had two meals served on our flight, both dinner.  One was very early on served late in the evening last night.  The other was towards the end of the flight today when it was a late lunch in our arriving time zone.  All of the food was excellent and they had food and drinks available “anytime” that we wanted. There were two chefs on board!  Other than the oppressive heat, everything was awesome on this flight.

We were surprised when we heard the captain say that we were landing in negative one temperatures and that we would be seeing some snow.  It never occurred to us that it would be snowing in Istanbul, it always seems like such a warm place.  But when we came in for the landing, there it was, everything was covered in snow and a good amount of snow coming down, too.

Every flight after Houston on this trip ended up having no gangway but instead we had to take buses to and from the planes out on the tarmac.  So landing in Istanbul meant that we had to walk down icy cold metal stairs outside with our six carry ons and two small children.  Luckily everyone had coats except for me.  Might was checked.  I was fine, though.  The wind was not so bad, but it was very cold.  Especially cold after having been in Panama and Nicaragua all summer!  This was a pretty big shock.

We got into the airport at Ataturk and learned that many flights had been delayed and cancelled due to the weather.  We looked at the board, saw a flight to Athens and ran to that one.  It was the wrong one, though.  Had our flight not been delayed, we would have missed it!  That was a close one.  We looked and looked at the boards trying to find our correct flight.  Eventually we found it.  It was delayed, and then cancelled.  Dominica had to scramble to cancel our hotel, our ground transportation in Athens and to move our Aegean flight from Athens to Chania until tomorrow evening.

We had no idea what to do.  Ataturk is a massive and very packed airport.  This is very much the crossroads of the world!  I have never been anywhere that was so completely cosmopolitan.  Just reading the flight boards was something.  Flights to so many cities and countries that I have never seen flights to before.  Istanbul is one of the world’s connection cities.  In the heart of everything.

We had to deal with a help line to find out what was happening with flights.  That took at least an hour.  The girls and I camped out while Dominica went through the line.  The line was crazy and erupted into a fight at one point.  A crowd gathered and people were filming.  I thought that it was probably Dominica until I realized that the fight was in Turkish.  Dominica managed to make friends with some people traveling home to Tehran in the line.  She got to hang out with them for a while.

We stopped by the luggage desk and made sure that our luggage was going on to Athens directly and that we did not need to pick it up or anything.  We are very concerned that this is going to cause our luggage to be lost.

Air Turkey got us tickets for a flight to Athens at noon tomorrow and sent us down to another level to talk to a hotel desk about getting accommodations for the night.  We went downstairs and got into the hotel line which stretch for about four hours.  We put in an hour or two in the line, mostly with Dominica waiting in line while I sat with the girls.  While we were waiting in this very long line a kind stranger came up and gave Liesl a sandwich for her and Luciana to share.  This worked out great as they were very hungry and after I pulled off the meat, they loved the sandwich.

Dominica was very worried that there would be no hotels or if there was that it would be so late that we would not get any sleep and that tomorrow would be just horrible.  So she called around and found the five star WOW Istanbul very nearby and booked us a room there.  We got out of line, grabbed a five Euro cab (they do not use Euros in Istanbul but they are common enough here) and got the hotel which turned out to be quite amazing.

The WOW Istanbul was just what we needed.  A gorgeous hotel that took care of everything.  We got a nice, big king room and decided to take it easy just getting room service for the night.  We did not have the energy to even go down to the restaurant to eat.  The food was very good and we managed to have a very authentic Turkish dinner, as far as hotel delivery can go, while in Istanbul.  We are so glad to be back to the world of good and healthy food.  Boy have we missed it.

It was off to sleep pretty quickly for us.  There was nothing for us to do and there was not enough time for us to get as much sleep as we really wanted.  We all had basically no sleep last night so just wanted to get to bed and pass out.

The room was pretty warm so we actually slept with the window open, even though it was snowing outside.  The room never got that cool, but it was comfortable.  Both girls slept in the bed with us.

This is it, our last day in the US and there is so much to do!  Lots of stuff is packed but a lot is not and, of course, there is a lot of things that just have to wait for the last second.  Everything is being charged this morning, there are four Fires to get charged, many camera batteries and such.

For food this morning it was “eat whatever was in the house.”  So for me that meant BBQ Quorn Chicken bites for breakfast.  We are cleaning out the fridge as best as we can.  At least all of the food in it is pretty healthy.

We ran up to the Grices in the Chrysler 200 that we had rented loaded with our luggage.  We parked it at the and Dominica and her dad set to getting everything loaded into it.  Emily and I took the Spark and ran to the Bay Area boxing place near their house to get the laptop, three iPads and more shipped out to day which should arrive to him on Saturday.  The laptop wasn’t quite ready to ship and I had to sit in the parking lot trying to get it ready at the last second.

After shipping out the stuff to dad, Emily and I ran to Sonic and got drinks to take back.  I texted Dominica and she asked for a drink and forgot to take the order for everyone else so we thought that no one wanted drinks but us.  So it was a small order, but fast.

Back to the house the car was pretty much ready to go.  I had enough time to finish my drink before we left.  This is it, six months away from the United States.  A huge move.

We left around five to make sure that we would beat traffic.  We made good time, thanks to the toll tag built into the rental car, and were up to the airport in well under two hours.  We even had time to stop and get gas and snacks before returning the car.

We dropped off the car, took some pictures and lugged our luggage to the shuttle to take us to the airport proper.    So much luggage.  We have four huge suitcases, all filled to the fifty pound limit and then six pieces of carry on – two big rollers and four backpacks.  Plus we have the one freebie grey bag that has the car seat and the coats in it.  Eleven pieces in all.  Way better than we have done in the past but far more than can fit into a normal car.  We can’t use a Yaris to get around like we did in Panama.  We must have a larger car.  The Chrysler 200 was filled to the brim.

Shuttle to the airport and our bags were checked and we were through security quick and easy.  We are getting very used to the international terminal at IAH by now.  We even know where to eat and when new restaurants arrive.

Once we were set up at the gate with plenty of time to kill I went and got us some food to eat while we waited.  I hit Aunt Cookies as everyone loves pretzels and they also sell the Nestle Tollhouse cookies that are Luciana’s favourites.  They did not have her favourite cookie this time, though.  So no luck there.

We had to wait about an hour and a half before it was time to board.  No issues, we were onto the plane and ready for our nearly half a day flight to Istanbul.  Our flight time was nine.

Our plane is a Boeing 777, our least favourite.  We like that there is a middle row of three seats for the girls and me to sit in as that is very logistically easy to manage but the 777 has no airflow and is extremely uncomfortable for anyone who needs air while flying, which many people do and Dominica especially really needs.  There is no way to control your own temperature so you are stuck in the general temperature of the airplane without any air movement which is tough for me, too.  And the plane was extra warm as well.  It was a rough combination.

We all put on some movies and called it a night.  The girls were not at all ready to sleep but we hope that they will fall asleep after not too long.  This is, by far, our longest flight ever and it is only the first leg.  This is going to be one really, really long trip.