Loooong day yesterday! I was actually in the States for the last week. (I didn’t put it on the blog for security reasons. You know, stalkers, bad guys, and the like.) But we are back in our home sweet home now!
I was prepared for everybody and their uncle to ask me how I was liking Germany while I was home. I did get that question a lot, but even more people asked me how long it took to get from Germany to Dallas. (I didn’t know a basic little factoid like that was so interesting. Or maybe it isn’t interesting at all; people were just being polite.) I can tell you that there is a direct flight between Frankfurt and Dallas that lasts all of 10 hours. Small potatoes, if you ask me. Unfortunately, we did not take that flight. And our travel took much longer than 10 hours.
We had the first flight out of Nuremburg the day that we left. Stephen and I went back and forth on whether we wanted to drive to the airport or take the train. Travel time would be about the same, but we weren’t crazy about leaving our car at the airport for a week. In the end, we decided to take the train. Alas, the early train doesn’t pick up at our stop early enough to make our flight. That meant we had to go to the airport the night before. Our travels were as follows:
10:00 pm – take a 10 minute taxi ride from our house to the nearest train stop.
10:30 pm – take an hour train ride from the local train stop to the Nuremburg train station.
Sleepy eyes on the train ride. Tired and not even on a plane yet!
11:30 pm – take the 15 minute subway ride from the train station to the airport.
11:45 pm – Get our boarding passes and find a comfy bench. Stephen and I slept lightly and uncomfortably for a few hours. Apparently this is a pretty common occurrence as every other bench had sleepy passengers in various states of sleep draped over them.
2:00 am – Wake up to the sound of people talking and realize that the airline is checking people in. We spent a total of 30 minutes getting checked in, going through security, and making our way to our gate. Once there, we promptly went back to sleep on a different, more comfortable bench.
Stephen catching some zzz’s. Can you see the eye shade he’s wearing? Hehehe!
5:00 am – Relocate benches again after going through passport checkpoint. Sleep a little more.
6:00 am – Board the first of three flights. Takeoff was about 20 minutes later. It took a little over an hour to go all the way from Nuremburg to London Gattwick Airport.
6:45 am local time (7:45 body clock time) – land and go through customs. The Gattwick airport is really nice. All the shops (and there are a ton!) and restaurants are in one main area. It pretty much looked like a mall. You can’t go to your gate until shortly before your flight boards. That sucks because you can’t nap (no space!) but you can shop. Stephen and I decided to eat at the Armadillo Café.
Breakfast = amazing! Stephen had some sort of breakfast burger with an egg. My food was a cooked banana, scrambled eggs, corncakes, and some veg on the side. We putzed around as long as we could, but this was by far the hardest part of all our travels. We were so tired and the airport was so loud. We somehow managed to kill 5 hours here, but by the end of our time in Gattwick, I was so ready to go.
12:20 pm local time (1:20 pm body clock time) – we boarded our flight. Thankfully we sat in a three-seater row and no one sat next to us! Score! (I have the best luck with this. No one sat next to us to and from Australia, also.) I watched two movies and tried to sleep, buy my body wasn’t having it. It didn’t help that it was light outside the whole way and everyone on the plane around us was chatty. (Normally transatlantic flights are much quieter.) I was awake the entire 9 plus hour flight.
4:40 pm local time (10:40 pm body clock time) – we landed in Tampa. I was so annoyed that we had to go through customs then go through security again. Lame. But I was jazzed to discover that the airport had free wi-fi. I also got my first Frappuccino in over a month.
Note the dark circles under my eyes. I was a zombie lady by that point.
Never has it tasted so good.
6:45 pm local time (12:45 am body clock time) – We were in the air again, this time headed for Dallas. This flight was completely full and Stephen and I both had middle seats many rows apart. Not a fan. I used this time to read a huge chunk of my book (You Are an Ironman by
8:30 pm local time (3:30 am body clock time) – We landed in Dallas in one piece. My brother scooped us up. We stayed the night at Stephen’s brother’s apartment, but not before staying up until almost midnight talking. If you are keeping track, that means we were awake until 6 am body clock time – 32 hours after leaving home! Needless to say, I was pretty jacked up. We managed to be troopers the next day. (I spent that day getting a mani/pedi and free lunch with my future sister-in-law the day before her wedding. It’s not like it was hard to suffer through!)
Getting home was much easier. Our layovers were shorter and we didn’t get to the airport hours before our first flight. We even sprung for the first class upgrade from Dallas to Florida!
From Florida to London and London to Nuremburg, we didn’t have any seat-mates. Once again it was just the two of us! (Can you say, spoiled?)
So how long does it take to get from where I live in Germany to where I used to live in Texas? Answer: a long, long time! But it is so worth it. We had an awesome visit with so much happiness. I can’t wait to tell y’all all about my big brother’s wedding! (Short version: it was awesome.)
What was your longest and/or worst travel experience? Australia was our longest single flight, but I think this was our longest day of travel of all time. I’m not too eager to repeat it.*
Yikes, what a long day!! Glad you had such a great time with family though!
The longest travel day I have ever had was when I worked in Louisiana. We had a weekend trip in Idaho and coming back we drove from Moscow, ID to Boise (got there about midnight). Spent the night in the airport. Got up at 5am to board a 7am flight. It was a Southwest flight, so we went from Boise, to Oakland, to LA, to El Paso, to Dallas. Then, we drove from Dallas back to Louisiana (about a 5 hour drive). Longest day ever because we had no food!!
Holy moly! You’ve got me trumped, for sure! And isn’t there something about traveling that makes sleep so restless and food so necessary? I don’t know how you went that long without eating. I’m impressed!*
Craaaap that is unpleasant. Did you get your hair cut?!?
Longest travel experience I had was when I had to spend the nite in the Denver airport because our original flight got canceled. It was freeeezing in the airport so sleep was tough and we lost an entire day of vacation!
I chopped all my hair off the day after the wedding! (It was time got a change.)
Sleeping in airports is horrible! Was J-Slice with you? I kept thinking about how tricky my travels would have been with a kiddo in tow.*
Lovin the new style!
Thankfully no J-slice wasn’t with me but he loves being cold and is practically a professional sleeper so I bet he would’ve gotten the most restful sleep out of any of us! (40-ish people in our group for a ski trip).
You know I thought I noticed some posting of comments and more normal hours for Texas, but then I doubted myself. Ha. And holy crap! You’re travel back to the states sounds miserable! Glad you rewarded yourself with an upgrade on the way back! And can’t wait to hear about the wedding!
You got me! The wedding hotel had free wifi, which was too good to resist!*
Came across your blog from a friend of mine. Longest trips was when we lived in Asia for 11 years. We would come back to the states twice a year. It usually consisted of a 4 hour flight, 13-15 hour flight then usual a 5-6 hour flight. 4 times a year. those do not include the several hour lay overs we always had, or the nights we had to spend because there werent flights till the next morning.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting! Living on a different continent from your family is a recipe for a lot of travel. And Asia! That’s far away. I’m impressed that you went home so often! I totally told everyone that I’m not going back again unless it’s for another wedding or a birth or something else major. (Chances are good that I’ll renig on that; I miss my family too much!)*
Oh my, that sounds exhausting! I can’t tell any stories like this. The worst thing ever happening to me was when two years ago the railroad lines between Hannover and Berlin were frozen and I had to travel to Berlin via Hamburg. Ok, it was cold, but I only had to wait an hour or so in Hamburg for the next train.
That sounds like a pain in the butt!*
I cannot believe you were awake for almost 2 days straight! What misery! I hate trans-Atlantic flights; I wish they would bring the Concorde back (and that I could afford it!)
Me, too! Part of the reason our travels were so drawn out is that we chose the absolute cheapest flight we could on Travelocity. I’m just too cheap to pay more to get there faster.*
Blah. That’s one long trip. Airport sleeping is no fun at all.
I haven’t had many long travel days; flying to Hawaii from Tampa was ten or so hours of flight time, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m sure it’ll be the same when we go next month. I’m so glad you had the opportunity to come back to texas for the wedding; I’m sure it was worth every sleepless minute!
It was totally worth it! I’ve never flown to Hawaii before. I would say that it wouldn’t matter how long it takes to get there because in the end you are in Hawaii, but I know it doesn’t work like that. You’ll probably be pretty pooped by the time you get there.*
Wow, that sounds like a horrifically long and grueling and arduous trip. Not fun. Layoffs are no good when they don’t allow you enough time to leave the airport and explore the local city! But I am glad that you made it safely!!!
The longest trip I’ve ever taken was to Bali. It took almost 48 hours each way. On the outbound, I flew from Chicago to Osaka, Osaka to Bangkok, and then Bangkok to Denpasar (in Bali) – and had very long layoffs at each stop. Then on the way back, I flew Denpasar to Singapore, Singapore to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Chicago, also with long layoffs at each stop. It was brutal, but the long layoffs did allow me to sample a little of the local area, which was nice!
48 hours of travel! Wow! My eyes just popped out of my head reading that. At least you were headed somewhere totally worth – Bali! Yes, please!*
Oh my goodness..reading this brought back memories of my return trip from Italy to Idaho. It involved, taxis, trains, buses and planes, and took over 24 hours! Burger with an egg on it was one of my favorite things. The only time I ever tried it was in France and it was amazing!