Wales, We Are In You!

Sorry I’ve not blogged recently. Internet has been spotty and we won’t be at full capacity until next Tuesday. However, we are in Wales … and we are loving it! The people here are lush, they are.

Getting here was less than fun, tho. It became a farce of shite-we-weren’t-expecting-and-things-we-expected-not-happening. Not as bad as Mark Watney had it on Mars, but t’was enough, t’will serve. Which reminds me; you really want to read The Martian.

 

The first thing we weren’t expecting was that Delta would refuse to let us check our luggage in. Sweet Babou went to the airport four hours prior to our flight to check-in our suitcases. There were 6 big ol’ maximum weight allowance suitcases and there wasn’t really room in the van for us and them. So, while I dressed the girls at the hotel, my hubby wisely took the luggage like a responsible adult … only to be told we couldn’t check the bags because there was a “medical” hold on our stuff.

As a Type I diabetic my hubby has lots of stuff that has to stay with him on the plane, so we get a small extra bag-o-crap on the flight as a freebie. How this prevents us from checking our luggage in curb-side is beyond me. You must consult Delta.

I was wroth with Delta.

Frantic, I called down to the lobby of the hotel and explained our crisis. The Ramada Indianapolis Airport hotel (blessed be its name) had a shuttle service, but we needed a solo run with us and all our crap an hour before the next scheduled run. The staff at Ramada (bless them) totally went out of their way and made a special run just for us. Thanks to them, we got to the airport on time.

I was still vexed with Delta, but was somewhat mollified when the nice staff member moved us to the head of the special-needs line and they started checking in our bags pronto. I hope big corporations realize they are made or broken by the customer service of their staff; the kind attentions of the agents at the gate made me throttle back my decision to never, ever fly Delta again.

The only issue I had at this point was the fact my carryon laptop bag weighed what I estimate to be a quarter ton. Seriously, it felt like I had packed extra gravity in there. One of my arms may be longer now from carrying the damn thing.

The first leg of our trip was a short hop to Detroit. The kids were champs and actually enjoyed the trip because they got pretzels from what Buttercup calls the “pretzel plane ladies”. Can you tell the plane attendants were all women on that flight? 

We schlep our stuff to the gate for our next flight, which changes. So we drag our bags (including the anvils I had in my laptop case) to the new gate. There, a snippy attendant tells me she has been paging us because they don’t know how they are going to seat us all together … even though the tickets said we were all sitting together. She was curt, like this was OUR fault.

I hated Delta again and gave her an aggressive stare that had her backing off right quick. DO NOT irk a redhead trying to move to Wales with a bag of anvils, okay?

We board the plane and sure enough – she had screwed the pooch and Blossom was seated a mile from the rest of us. Blossom has Asperger’s. She will sit that far away from me on a plane when she’s 21 or hell freezes over. I summoned a flight attendant, and girded my loins for war.

No need for war – the attendant was super-nice and immediately fixed it so Blossom was sitting within arms reach of both myself and Sweet Babou. Plus, she gave the kids little wings to pin on their shirts as junior pilots. I forgave Delta once again.

Then we flew to Amsterdam. It was a looooooooooong flight. I tried to sleep but of COURSE I couldn’t. So instead of getting some badly needed shut-eye, I watched two movies and a documentary on wine via the inflight entertainment system. Bubbles, who was sitting beside me, watched Zootopia 4 times. In a row.

 

Finally, we arrive in Amsterdam. Well, at least the airport in Amsterdam. It isn’t like we got to go sight-seeing. We had to manhandle bags on anvils across the airport to the next departure gate to Cardiff instead. None of us had slept, and since it was 6:00 AM in Amsterdam and midnight in Indiana, we were bushed. Blossom still managed to “pose” though. A born diva, is she.

Now, we just had a wee flight to Cardiff and we’d be in our new home. We were flying on Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM). The flight attendants were the tallest, blondest humans I have ever met in person. It was like we were flying in a Viking longship. Without exaggeration, I know at least two of the female flight attendants were 6 footers and more because one was as tall as my husband and the other was a bit taller. At once point I whispered to Sweet Babou, “We’re flying on the KLM ship Norse Stereotype”.  We were so loopy from lack of sleep that this was hysterical to us.

Finally, 24 hours after we left Indianapolis, we arrived in Wales. We were immediately accosted by helpful Welsh people who gave use free trollies for our shit-ton of luggage (not counting anvils) and advised us on where to eat breakfast and welcomed us to their lovely country. The taxi driver even took a picture for us.

It was too early to check into our bed & breakfast, but the sweet manager of The Manor House (it was worth every penny and deserved every star in its five-star reviews) let us leave our HUGE pile of luggage there while we picked up the keys to our new home. We decided to eat breakfast and walk along the beach while we were waiting for our check-in time to come up.

We went the Seashore Grill, where they not only gave us delicious food — they let our two youngest daughters to curl up and sleep on the padded table benches. This was our view:

We then had a nice leisurely stroll along the rocky beach, collecting seashells and cooing over the view and the enjoying the reinvigorating breeze.

Afterward, we went to The Manor House and collapsed upon the beds to sleep as though we had been cursed by a magic spindle and an evil queen.