Getting There

Aweh, guys!

So, unfortunately, hubby booked his ticket under his nickname, which is a derivative of his real name. I had been telling him to call them to change it, but he was happy to do so at the airport. We went to the check in desk and they noted the error and sent us to a customer service desk to sort out the issue. About 20 minutes and 100 US dollars, the error was rectified but our seat numbers changed. We had hoped to get exit row because hubby is a really tall guy but now, we were crammed into regular seats. I also think this affected our seats for the second leg of the journey that we won through the bid. We were supposed to have neighbour free but now our tickets were reflecting normal seats that weren’t together. We decided to fix this once we landed in Abu Dhabi.

We boarded our flight and were greeted by tinkly Middle Eastern music and friendly flight attendants. We got settled and shortly afterwards we were in the air. The seats were rather cramped without a lot of leg room, so it was hard to get comfortable. I will hand it to Etihad though; their food is great. I had lots of vodka and orange juice and chose the curry option because I knew it would be awesome… and it was! The best thing was the carrot salad which was extremely flavourful.

The entertainment wasn’t bad either, but I wish there were more than a handful of episodes of a show, but the movies were very recent. What was also cool is that we could share the movie we were watching with each other in sync (at least until someone paused). We chose “The Meg” which was just silly.

After 8 hours in the air, a beautiful sunrise, swollen ankles and wrinkled clothes we landed in Abu Dhabi which has such a stunning airport. We decided to try and rectify the issue of our tickets at the counter, fingers crossed for first class… hah! No such luck! The lady did find hubby a neighbour free seat but there was no place for me. So, she upgraded my seat to economy extra which is at the bulkhead with more legroom… but now I had neighbours including a one year old baby, I was separated on the opposite end of the plane away from my hubby and I was stationed right by the toilets. I actually cried… but I think that was the exhaustion and stress. To be honest, the couple were lovely, and their baby was well behaved for most of the flight, but the endless barrage of people going to the loo and having fat chats was enough to drive me batty… especially with no sleep for over 24 hours. Luckily my upgraded seat included a larger screen and I was able to have short involuntary naps mainly to “The Crimes of Grindelwald”. Finally, after 6 hours, we landed at Schipol…

Our bags were already on the carousel when we made it to baggage claim which was a sheer stroke of luck and getting through passport and security were a breeze. I told the gentleman checking my passport “dankuwel” and he responded “astublieft” which was my first surprise as I only thought it meant “please” like it does in Afrikaans. We then made it through to the arrivals area to find one of hubby’s colleagues, Monique, waiting for us. She presented us with a bag full of goodies to get us through the first couple of days and made sure we got on our shuttle which was really appreciated… we had finally made it!