Jay and I are off on another adventure. This time, we are taking a self-drive tour of Eastern Europe. We will be visiting seven different countries before it is all over.
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 only make three trips a day to Atlanta. Our afternoon flight was scheduled for 5:47 PM, which gave us plenty of time to get our three animals to their separate places.
I took my Havanese, Zack, first and dropped him off at the vet. The German Shepherd, Shadow, and our cat were dropped off on the way to the airport. Shadow is an outside dog and stays at an outdoor kennel. Our cat, Max, we dropped off at my brother’s house.
I also managed to arrive at my brother’s 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 heading off to the airport.
The Valdosta Airport is located south of Valdosta. 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. Once you go through security, you are immediately 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 board 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 eight hours long. We were flying on KLM, which is a Dutch airline. The flight was scheduled to depart at 10:35 PM, but I think it actually took off closer to 11:00 PM.
The flight was not crowded, which was nice. Jay and I even had an empty seat between us, giving 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 that was mostly cucumbers, beef with white rice, a hot roll, and a cinnamon apple spice cake for dessert. All in all, the meal was pretty good.
After the meal, I slept for about five hours until Jay woke me up because they were serving breakfast. Breakfast consisted of scrambled 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 only catching another flight and not staying in the country. They still stamped our passports.
After that, we had to go through another security checkpoint. They made me take my iPad out of my carry-on luggage. They still did not like everything else I had packed in there. The security agent went through 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 our iPhones while we were on the go, various adapter plugs and chargers for all of our electronics, a magnifying glass, and my folder with all of our reservations.
Everything went back through the scanner a second time, but we passed, and then I had to repack everything. Thankfully, we did not have to take off our shoes.
We then wandered around for a while because we had four hours to kill before boarding our final plane to Vienna. The last flight was also on KLM. This flight lasted about 1 hour and 20 minutes. They served us a chicken sandwich on this flight.
When we arrived in Vienna, we had to walk a very long way to get our luggage, but it was waiting for us when we finally got there. I had pre-booked a car to take us to our hotel. I cannot tell you how nice it is to collect your luggage and then walk out to see someone holding a sign with your name on it. He took us directly to our hotel.
We will be staying at the Hotel Alexander for several nights. I think it is supposed to rain again tomorrow, but I believe we are going to do the Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour to visit the sights.
