THE FLIGHT
Holy crap!! We survived, and we did it quite well I say. 25 hours from Auckland, NZ to Zagreb, Croatia. Thank god we weren’t flying with any of the US airline companies. Qatar airways was so much more enjoyable in every aspect than any airway I’ve flown before. More room so Gregg’s knees weren’t wedged into the seat in front of him, friendly service with the exception of one flight attendant but I’m just going to say she’s the exception here…, yummy food including specially gluten free meals just for me, and (take notes here Alaska Airlines) a free entertainment center in every seat with more movies than I could scroll through in two hours. Plus games, music, and a kid’s center. They even brought Conner a little travel Guess Who game in a cute zip pouch. Oh, and they have pull out bassinets!! Seriously, I had to go up to the front bathrooms after Gregg told me about them just to see for myself. The seats just behind the middle partition had two pull out bassinets that were attached to the partition wall with little bitty babies sleeping in them.
Our first flight was from Auckland to Qatar and it took 17.5 hours. That’s a long ass time in a seat not matter how comfy it is! But, with food and free alcohol it really didn’t take long before we were all asleep. We woke up in the morning and had breakfast, then watched movies and played battleship and chess with each other until we landed in Qatar. The Qatar airport was nice and very large. Just like in Fiji we had to go through security again to get to our connecting flight. It took so long that by the time we got to our next gate we had about 10 minutes to pee, play at a really cool playground, and make it back to the gate for last call to board. Yeah, Gregg was pretty irritated, but there was no way we were getting back on a plane after 17.5 hours without letting Conner get some of his crazies out on the playground. And hey, we made it so no point making a fuss right? ;)
The flight to Zagreb was a pretty uneventful 6 hours, but quite pleasant with another comfy airplane and good food again. We got to the airport and went down to get our bags where we were greeted by the sounds of sirens. Yay! Conner’s favorite! Shit…. I finally found a lady near the baggage claim to ask about the sound and she explained that the airport was brand new and had only been open for two weeks and they were still working out the kinks. The alarm was from one of the emergency exit doors they were working on. She was a very nice lady and after talking with Conner a bit about where we came from and our adventures so far she went on her way and Conner was fine again. We got our bags and looked at the “customs” area which was a red counter and a green counter telling us to go to the red counter if we had something to declare, green if we did not. The only person near the customs zone was in front of the hallway next to the counters and people seemed to be checking with him before walking out, so we figured he was “the man”. We walked over and handed him our passports. I said “I don’t think we have anything to declare, but we do have some food and a few pocket knives?”. He looked at the top passport for about 1 second, handed all three back to me and said what I believe was the Croatian equivalent of “meh” and nodded his head for us to go on our way. Ok then, we have arrived in Croatia! We got down to the car rental counter and had to wait for an hour before they opened, but they were happy to give us our car early, so we were out of the airport in not much time at all. The rental car we got was an Opal Astra and it was brand new, as in less than 500 miles on it. Well shit, as much as I loved the sight of it (and it was seriously fun to drive!) the mother in me was panicking at the thought of just what my 6 year old can do to a car in one month....
