Leaving for Our Grand European Tour

It is time for another adventure and this time we are taking a Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest along the Rhine, Main and Danube Rivers. This cruise is called the Grand European Tour and takes 15 days. We had plenty of time this morning to get last minute things done before leaving the house at 9:00am for the airport. We parked at Airport Parking and took the shuttle to the Sunport. The shuttle had to drop us off past our airline because they were filming a movie and they had quite a bit of the drop off area blocked. But even with that it was a quick check in and thankfully security wasn’t crowded and by 10:30am we were at our gate (A2) waiting for our flight.

Our first flight was from Albuquerque to Houston. We left Albuquerque at 12:15pm. Boarding went fast for two reasons. One, we were on a small plane (only two seats on each side of the aisle) and two, it was not a packed flight. This was a wonderful flight. Not only was it not crowded but there was quite a bit of leg room and it was extremely comfortable. We were in seats 17AB. I ended up reading for most of the flight and it seemed to go by fast and in no time, we were landing in Houston – sometime around 3:00pm. Once in Houston we had to go from terminal A to terminal E. This was an easy process on the SkyTrain. Once in terminal E we made our way to gate E7. The area around the gate was packed and there was nowhere to sit so we went two gates down and grabbed seats there. We only had an hour to wait before they started boarding our flight.

Boarding went fine but then we had a delay so we couldn’t take off right away. We were scheduled to leave at 4:50pm but we didn’t leave until 5:40pm. A good thing was I paid extra and we upgraded to EconomyPlus with extra leg room. It was great! There was plenty of space and it was very comfortable (seats 17KL). We also lucked up and there was no one else in our row (three seats) and so we had extra space. I started watching The Greatest Showman and about an hour into the flight they served us dinner. It was chicken orzo, salad, bread, salted caramel gelato, white wine and water. Pretty good meal. I finished my meal and the movie and then decided to start blogging. I also started watching another movie, Little Shop of Horrors. After that movie I stopped blogging and put the computer away and then watched At Eternity’s Gate – a movie about Vincent Van Gogh. When that movie finished, I did a little reading but then decided to watch one more movie. That movie ended up being Aquaman. I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. When the movie finished, I played a few games and they brought us a continental breakfast (croissant and yogurt). We landed in Amsterdam about an hour later. It was around 9:00am.

The airport/airplane situation today turned out wonderful. Things were calm, people were nice and respectful and everything went smoothly. We are now in Amsterdam and we can start enjoying the trip.