We woke up at 4am and got ready for a long day of travel. We walked to our airport terminal and stood in line to check in. We got there right about 5am and they were just starting to get people checked in. There was a large family a few places ahead of us in line and they were having to re-pack overweight suitcases and that took forever. We finally got checked in and through security. We had a little time to sit and then we boarded our flight. I was glad to have Jim traveling with us on the way home, but because we booked separately his seat was never near ours. This first flight we boarded through a jetway and he boarded from outside. It was a rather big plane for how short of a flight it was, just under an hour from Manchester to London. They served crisps and drinks (kind of strange for a 7am flight) and before long we were descending. We actually flew right over London and had amazing views of the city. I grabbed my phone at the last minute to take a picture. In the picture you can actually see the Shard (the tallest building in the UK), Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.
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| Amazing views of London |
Elliott got invited up into the cockpit and the pilot was so nice. He was showing Elliott all kinds of controls and even let Elliott wear his hat.
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We had a long layover in London. We had heard so many news stories about Heathrow being understaffed and difficulties traveling through there. Everything went very smoothly for us. We did some shopping and then had a big breakfast at Giraffe (same restaurant chain that we had our first dinner in London at). We did a little more souvenir shopping and then found a place to sit for a while. After an hour or so we went and found our gate, which involved a ride on a train. Our plane was there getting filled up with all the things you need on a 9 hour journey. It was a British Airlines Airbus A380 and is the largest passenger jet in the world and the only full length double deck jet airliner. Jim's seat was on the upper floor and our seat was on the lower floor. By this time the kids were good at holding their passports and getting their boarding pass scanned. The plane was arranged in a 3-4-3 seat set-up and we had the middle 4.
It was hard to sleep on the plane as we were "chasing the sun" and it never got dark. We were served snacks and a meal not too long after take off. It wasn't quite as good as the meal on our American Airlines long flight, but not terrible. We watched movies and played games, and Elliott spent a lot of time taking funny pictures of himself. They served another small meal before we landed.
We landed in Dallas and only had a 2 hour layover. This was the most rushed layover as we had to go through customs, claim our checked bags, re-check our bags, go through security, and get to our gate. This meant we needed to dump all our water bottles. Security even included walking in pairs past a search dog. It all went smooth until security when Ezra's personal bag was flagged. We had to wait a really long time to get it checked and it had an unopened water bottle in it. I had sent Jim and the other boys ahead to our gate and Ezra and I ran to catch up. After our skylink ride Jim was running back to help us with our bags as our flight was boarding. We got right on the plane. It was getting dark in Dallas and Elliott was very tired. I sat next to him and he was asleep almost before we took off. He slept the whole trip back to Idaho. We got to Idaho about 9pm (almost exactly 24 hours after we had woken up that morning), got our checked bags and my friend Amy picked us up and brought us home. It was so good to be home and we pretty much got right to bed so we could get right back into our regular routine Monday morning.
Every day of our trip we got updates on how Everest was doing along with pictures and videos. It was such a good time for him. He hadn't spent much time with other dogs and he got socialized with 4 other dogs. We will definitely be using this lady to watch Everest again, and we have already booked her for an upcoming ski trip.
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