[dropcap custom_class=”whb”]Jay and I are off on another adventure. this time we are taking a self-drive tour of Eastern Europe. We will be visiting 7 different countries before it is all over.
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We started our adventure by flying out of the Valdosta Airport. This is a very small airport. Delta is the only airline that flies out of there and they just make three trips a day to Atlanta. Our afternoon flight was scheduled for 5:47, which gave us plenty of time to get our three animal to their separate places. I took my Havaneese, Zack, first and dropped him off at the vet. The German Shepherd, Shadow, and our cat we dropped off on the way to the airport. Shadow is an outside dog and goes to an outside kennel. The cat, Max, we dropped off at my brothers house. I also managed to arrive at my brothers house while they were eating lunch and of course they had to invite us to join them. After lunch we visited with them for a while before we headed off to the airport.
The Valdosta Airport is located south of Valdosta, GA. They do not charge for parking, which is nice. We checked in and then waited. They do not open security until a few minutes before the plane is ready to board. You go through security and you are at the only gate. Because it is a small plane,you have to gate check your carry on luggage, You walk outside and then up a ramp to get on the plane. It had started to rain when we took off. The flight to Atlanta is only 37 minutes so they do not offer anything to drink. We landed in Atlanta, where it was also raining. We had about a four hour layover, so we ate lunch in the airport before looking for our gate.
Our next flight was from Atlanta to Amsterdam. It was about 8 hours. We were flying on KLM, which is a Dutch airline. The flight was due to depart at 10:35 PM, but I think it actually took off closer to 11. The flight was not crowded, which was nice. That made it where Jay and I had an empty seat between us, which gave us more room. They served dinner around midnight. You had a choice of vegetarian pasta or beef and rice, Jay and I both chose the beef and rice. The meal consisted of a salad, which was mostly cucumbers, the beef and white rice, a hot roll, and dessert was some type of cinnamon apple spice cake. All in all, the meal was pretty good. After the meal, I slept for about 5 hours until, Jay woke me up because they were serving breakfast. The breakfast meal consisted of scramble eggs and hash browns, yogurt, a roll, and a fresh fruit dish. Another meal that was pretty good.
When we landed in Amsterdam, it was raining. We exited the plane and had to go through passport control, even though we were not staying and just catching another plane. They did stamp our passport. After that we had to go through the security checkpoint. they made me take my ipad out of my carry-on luggage. They still did not like everything else I had in my carry-on. The security agent went though my suitcase and pulled just about everything out to be screened again. I do not travel light. In addition to my ipad, I had two converters to convert European electricity to American voltage, a mobile battery charger to charge my iphones when we are on the go, various adapter plugs and charger for all of our electonics, a magnifying glass, and my folder with all of my reservations. Everything went back through the scanner a second time, but we passed and then I had to pack everything. But we did not have to take off our shoes.
We then wandered around a while because we had 4 hour to kill before we boarded our final plane to Vienna. The last flight was also on KLM. This flight was about 1 hour and 20 minutes. They fed us a chicken sandwich on this flight. When we arrived at Vienna, we had to walk a very long way to get our luggage, but it was waiting on us when we got there. I had prebooked a car to take us to our hotel. I can’t tell you how nice it is to get your luggage and come out and see someone holding up a sign with your name on it. He took us directly to our hotel. We will be staying in the Hotel Alexander for nights. I think it is supposed to rain again tomorrw, but I think we will do the Hop On Hop Off bus tour to visit the sights.
