On our way!

After so many months of planning, researching and saving we were finally off on our big trip! Jo set off from Birmingham via Amsterdam and I packed up my ginormous case and headed for Madrid to catch my Iberia flight to NY.

As soon as my mobile started working once we’d taxied to the gate, I phoned some friends with very ambitious plans to get a cab into the city and so some catching up. As soon as I stood up, I realised just how tired I was, and the realisation of just how nuts that plan was stuck me. So despite protestations from people I hadn’t seen in months, I settled down for an hour or so in T4 waiting for Jo. A few UK-originating flights landed as I waited, and one mother greeted her teenaged son’s concerned ‘why didn’t you call us, you were away for weeks?’ with the funniest thing I heard all day ‘it’s Europe, sweetie, you know they don’t have phones there’.

Some hours later we finally met up at JFK’s terminal 4 and hopped in a cab to our airport hotel. After some tired shenanigans with the hotel lift alarm, we woke refreshed the next morning, brewed the first of many in-room coffees, and boarded the first courtesy bus of the day back to the airport for the next stage of our journey.