Getting home - 8.10

I was pretty excited about British Airways entertainment program - gimme the movies! But guess what: entertainment program for British Airways is horrible. I did not know that they make such small screens! Also, they start all the movies at the same time, first time they announced it (later they did not bother to do even that) and then you had to select a channel for the movie you wanted to see - horrible horrible system!!

Luckily I have 8h battery time now - wohooo! So at least I got to work on slideshow for couple of hours (when there was not much turbulence). In American Airlines they had power outlets one per 2/3 seats and expensive wireless as well so I thought BA would have at least the power outlets - but I was wrong :( No expensive wireless either.

To make it even worse - they didn't have even individual air flow control above your seat! And the service was horrible. Making a note to myself never to fly BA ever again unless absolutely necessary.

Rest of the time dragged by, flight to Stockholm was fine as well as flight to Tallinn. My brother left the car at the airport - there is no better feeling than sitting into your own car and driving it out of the parking lot after many weeks of traveling by bus or walking everywhere. Stopped by a birthday party and then headed home.

Note from the future: I woke up at 7am all rested and ready to go. I started calculating that I have slept 16h total this week :) Oh the joy of traveling, who needs sleep during vacation anyways right?

Reporting from Hong-Kong

It was kinda nice to arrive here. Flight map showed all the familiar cities and I knew what to expect when arriving, last year I was here 6th of September. Airport has been transformed quite a bit though, it looks nice. My flights so far have gone well, no major turbulence or delays or any other hassles. Only thing was that I had to claim my baggage in London Heathrow and do another check-in 'cause Estonian Air does not have baggage contract with Cathay Pacific :( All went smoothly with that so no biggie at all.

I'm not sure how I managed to get even few good hours of sleep on the last flight. Managed to have a dream even where one of my friends got stuck in airplane restroom :). Maybe the ability to sleep on the flights comes with age? No clue, but I'm definitely happy about it. Hopefully now I will only need to sleep 1 day instead of 3 days to get back on track once I arrive in the destination :D Kidding, no time to sleep during vacation ;)

Hunger bites so food hunting starts now. Some stretches for my back and legs are in order as well (oh how I'm dreaming about running). Next flight coming up in 4 hours.
Hugs!

about 40 minutes to go

last set of e-mails have been sent. sitting at the airport, listening to music, tweeting, facebook and staring at the dark clouds outside. i have not snapped out of the daily hassles yet. yesterday was a long day.. preparations for Long Distance Triathlon started at 6am for me and event finished 11:30pm. it was a tough, fun, exciting and a happy day. i'm so proud of all of you who competed and all of you who assisted with organizing the event. i'm a lucky person to have such good people around me!

this morning alarm went off 9am, good solid 8h sleep, new morning full of hassles started. all in all i managed and i managed good. now there are 17 flights waiting for me in the next 6 weeks and then i'll be back where i started from. but that i won't think about before i'm off the last flight ;) .. and that won't be anytime soon :D

life is sooooo gooood :)
you all take care and be good!

stay tuned! liftoff coming up shortly :D

Home sweet sweet home

Thanks to the wireless, my time at Portland airport flew by. Flight to Amsterdam was very nice and peaceful. Probably one of the best flights I've had in the past 10 years. Plane was less than half full, 75% of people did not have to share their row with anybody (well, not the whole row but the seats located right next to each other I mean: 2+4+2 seats in a row and 3 people sitting in one row only). As I was quite up front I got all the luxuries one can imagine, 2 seats to myself, electric outlet, personal TV's/entertainment center and so on. There was very little turbulence and again I managed to get few hours of very good sleep on the plane. Although it was a tough decision to sleep as there were many good movies to watch :)

Amsterdam airport - well free wireless is really nice of course, but it is truly useless if there are no electric outlets by the most sitting areas. I found one plug, but none of my cords fit in there and the adapter was in my checked in luggage :( Flight to Tallinn seemed to last forever. Plane was not very full, which made it a bit better, but oh the minutes were just dragging by. After 2 long flights and 12 hours of sitting at the airports I was really anxious to be done with flying. And my luggage did not make it :( they forgot it to Portland and will be delivered to me later :( My coat was packed in there though :) so run to the car was fast :)

My family was there to greet me at the airport - with flowers and birthday songs :) Thank you!

It is always nice to return home, no matter where one comes from or how long one has been away. Although I really would not have minded to stay in Hawaii for couple of more months :)

As always, I'm getting great ideas already about my future travels. Plans are forming in my head, ideas are there and my imagination is running wild. More on the subject in couple of months - stay tuned!

Thank you for visiting, reading and comments. Take care and spread the love (suggested by my boss on Valentines :) ) - hang loose!

21.02-22.02 Getting home

My plane from Honolulu left at 23:40, I sat down on my seat and fell asleep immediately. I did not open my eyes once during the 5,5 hour flight :) I did regain counsciousness couple of times but then fell back to sleep almost instantly. I have never been able to sleep on a plane, seems that I'm learning slowly, I even managed to have dreams this time!

Now I'm just trying to pass time by in Portland. Luckily here they have wireless internet coverage throughout the aiport - wohoo. But they do not have any good shops here :( At least the food court is decent. I keep myself busy with updating my blog, uploading pictures and watching movies. I still have 3,5 hours till my check-in, ugh, I guess another movie coming up :)

See you all in few days, some sooner some later. I'll try to manage another long flight and then I'm almost at home already :) Lots of hugs!

13.02 traveling from Minnesota to Hawaii

Friday the 13th was not a good day. It started off just fine: got up at 4:30 and took a quick shower. Kids were gonna come with us so we got them woken up and ready to go. Older boy was so qute - he was tired but he kept telling that I will go to the airport and will fly on a plane. I guess he really did not understand that this means I'm flying away. We headed out at 5 to drive to Duluth airport. Roads were fine and we got there quarter after 6, farewells followed. Colten was left sitting in the car with the most confused face when I said that I'll be leaving now and I'll be back in couple of years - he fell all silent.

At the ticket counter the lady could not figure out all the flights I will be taking. I asked her to book me all the way through, but she was unable to do it, claiming that she sees me only on one flight?!?! Finally we got so far that she checked my luggage all the way at least.

So I get to Minneapolis just fine. At the check-in they announce that as they are overbooked they are looking for volunteers to change flights. I was suppose to fly from Minneapolis to Honolulu and from there to Maui. Now they were offering to go directly to Maui via Seattle - I understood that in Seattle I don't even need to get off the plane, great I thought, so I decided to switch the flights. Now that was a big mistake. They did give me a voucher that I can't most likely use up within a year though. Anyhoo, but what they did was that they only got me a seat up till Seattle and then they did not book me on the next flight. This I found out only in Seattle of course :( So I was about to get stuck in Seattle because the flight to Maui was overbooked! Argh I was so upset. They had also messed up bookings for one family where 2 people out of 4 had seats, so those 2 came off the flight and I got on. I got to Maui just fine, flight was awfully bumpy though. Wytni found me at the airport and even my luggage made it!

By the time we had gotten the rental car and got the the condominium we were all dead tired and headed straight to bed.