Once we were done cleaning up the house, it was time to load the car. This would be the first time we'd be loading a car with five big bags. I mean, we had five bags when we left Florida, but one of those was a relatively small green duffle bag. That bag was now replaced with Trine's gigantic suitcase. It would be a challenge, but at least it was only an hour's drive or so.
Packing the car commenced. The final result was that the kids had to have the big blue duffel bag (which weighed 50 pounds) across their laps. That and the trunk cargo cover things that had to be removed from the trunk in order to fit the other bags.
Bella complained that the other two only had the bag on half of their laps, and she had the bag on her entire lap. Sigh.
Here is an example of my thriftiness during this trip: I had to return the car with a full tank of gas. But I knew from careful fuel meter observation that I could drive 100 kilometers before the indicator went visibly below the F. So I wanted to top off the tank somewhere around 100 kilometers from the airport. Which I did. My apologies to the person who next rents this car.
We got to the airport on time and had no trouble returning the car. Renting from Sixt at the Copenhagen airport was definitely my favorite car renting experience. Easy, fast, no fuss. And no, they did not pay me to say that.
We checked our five bags in and had a nice chat with the girl at the check-in counter. She asked if we had used a scale for the bags because they were all so close to the limit, but none went over. We complained about the crappy batteries we had bought at Kvickly. She asked if we'd bought the store brand multi-pack (she even described the packaging exactly). "Yeah, those don't work well," she said. Should have gone with the Energizers!
We weren't ready to eat lunch, so we took our food through security. I forgot that the jar of olives wouldn't make it through (if I'd just drained them, it would have been okay). So we lost those.
We got to our gate and I made sandwiches. Cutting the tomatoes with a plastic knife obtained from the Food Market was sloppy, but better than nothing.
The flight to Amsterdam was fine. We had our time zones a little off, and we thought we had more time to get to our connecting flight than we did. When we got to the gate, they were anxiously awaiting us, and we were almost the last ones to get on. So that was awkward.
Bella was disappointed in this KLM plane. It seemed a little older than the Delta plane we flew over on, The video screens were older and dimmer. But there were plenty of movies to keep us occupied. Unlike the flight over, where we needed to go to sleep to minimize the jet lag, we needed to stay awake through this whole flight (and then sleep in the car on the way home). That meant it was movie time. I think most of us got four entire movies watched, though I was barely finishing the last few minutes of my fourth movie when we landed in Atlanta. I watched Captain America: the Winter Soldier, The Two Faces of January, Cuban Fury, and Saving Mr. Banks. I enjoyed all of them. I watched Cuban Fury because during Two Faces of January I kept looking at the screen in the row in front of me, where someone was watching Cuban Fury. Looked funny, so I gave it a shot. I liked all of the movies.
On the ground in Atlanta, waiting to deplane
In Atlanta, we had to pick up our luggage and then take it through customs before our final flight to Orlando. We got four of our five bags, but Trine's bag was a no-show. We asked the employees and they said it most likely would be waiting for us in Orlando, but if not, that would be the place to file a missing bag claim. Ugg. Okay.
As we sat at the gate in the Atlanta airport, waiting to board our final airplane of this trip, I was tired. And the smell of the fast food places near the gate was so strong. Not in a pleasant I'm-missing-me-some-Burger-King strong, but like nauseating fried grease strong.
It was close to midnight when we boarded our last plane. Five jet lagged zombies heading to Florida after 56 nights in Europe. Soon we would be on our own beds for the first time since June 17. And I had to be at work in eight hours!
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