The Longest Day

Lucien waiting for us at the airport - his sign has our name on it.
Sew Diva and Bug at the airport

The trip from Seattle to Braşov was one of the longest days of our lives. Bear, Bug and I all got up early Thursday to do our last minute things before leaving Seattle: Bear packed and cleaned house, Bug went for a run and I drove the homeless ladies from the shelter back to downtown. Then it was off to the airport to catch our flight. . I was hoping to have some photos to include with this posting but Bear was not up for following the guys into the septic system on the airplane to manually clean the sensors which were sending a faulty “full” signal – this shuts down the lavatories – not a good thing for a 9 hour flight. This required a 1 ½ hour sit on the plane at the gate. We were all planning to catch up on our sleep during the 9 hours between Seattle and Amsterdam but there was the matter of the small children making this trip. I knew there was a reason I didn’t fly with my children until they were older. There were several kids in our area and they seem to have divvied the screaming up so that each child got his own solo time. Instead we all watched more movies than we really wanted while drooling over the sound suppressing headphones in the In-air catalog. The wait at the gate in Seattle turned our 6 hour layover in Amsterdam to 5 hours. We managed food twice, a visit to the airport branch of the Rijksmuseum and some serious nodding at the boarding gate. We left for our 5 hour flight to Bucharest. Again, it was only nodding off and not any real sleep. Dropping into Bucharest was beautiful. It was evening so we got the beautiful late afternoon colors in the fields surrounding the airport. It reminded me of the Palouse – not rolling hills but all kinds of colors of green and brown. Bear had made arrangements for a driver, Lucien, to pick us up at the airport and drive us the 3 hours to Braşov. Traveling with Bear as he gets older is definitely an improvement. We no longer have to schlep our bags onto and off of busses and trains. By the time we got into our apartment and settled down it was midnight Friday – 2 pm Friday Seattle time. A long, long day!