I admit: we did almost ZERO trip planning for our honeymoon to London and Paris. During the months of wedding planning, I kind of let honeymoon planning fall to the wayside. Jay assured me that he would pick up the slack in the honeymoon department, but sadly that did not happen before we actually left. At that point I began to suspect that my new husband was almost as good of a procrastinator as I was. Our plan originally was to do all the packing and trip research on Sunday (the day after the wedding) and leave on Monday all relaxed. That also did not happen. On Sunday, we opened gifts and were amazed at the generosity of our friends and family, and literally could not do anything else for the rest of the day. It took us hours to open gifts and write down what people generously gave us (useful for thank-you card writing later) because our brains and bodies were moving so slowly. So obviously, packing and planning a trip to Europe was out of the question.
So 2 days after our amazing wedding, we woke up on a Monday morning and realized we were flying to London later that night on a red-eye flight.
It was time to pack.
So all day we packed and packed and rushed around to buy things and borrow things for the trip. Finally we were ready to go – and had about 10 minutes to spare before my lovely parents came by to drive us to the airport.
In the car, my mom peppered us with questions: What did we want to see? How were we going to get from the airport to our hotel in London? What was our trip itinerary like? What were the closest subway stations to our hotels in London and Paris? Jay and I looked blankly at her, and mumbled something about enjoying spontaneity on vacations and not wanting to over-plan our trip.
At the airport, Jay and I alternated between congratulating ourselves for being smart enough to delay the honeymoon until Monday, and blaming ourselves for not doing more honeymoon research earlier.
But prepared or not, we were relaxed and ready to go! Since this was a red-eye flight leaving at 11pm, we needed to get some sleep on the 7 hour flight so that when we arrived in London at noon, we would be ready to start our trip!
Alas, it was not to be. More specifically, it was the worst flight we had ever taken. The universe decided to give us 2 seats in the centre of the 4-seat middle row. So no window or aisle seats for us. Oh well, that’s ok since we were planning on sleeping anyway. Nope – the universe seated me beside a mom with a 1-year old boy. Jay looked at me sympathetically, then settled down in his seat and turned away from the baby (and me). Five minutes later, another woman and her 2-year old daughter plopped down beside Jay. Jay and I looked at each other in silent horror. We were sandwiched between 2 babies on a red-eye flight. All night the babies cried and shouted, and kicked and squirmed. When there was some silence or calm, it would only be about ten minutes before one baby cried and set off the second baby. Their poor mums were quite apologetic, and Jay and I kept reassuring them that it was okay (it wasn’t, but what else are you going to say?)
Anyway, we couldn’t get off that plane fast enough.
- Michelle
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