So the first part of my journey has been pretty darn good. I ran Mommy ragged in the airport in Tampa. I hid behind every pillar and climbed on every chair. We had a snack of pretzels and OJ in the “US Airways Club”. Afterwards we headed down to the main terminal and waited for the plane to get ready. Daddy set up my seat and I settled right in. I fussed for a few minutes, Mommy said I was exhausted after getting up at 5:45 again, and then actually fell asleep. I fell asleep right as the plane taxied to the runway for take off. I slept for about 25 minutes and then someone came on the overhead speaker and it startled me and woke me right up. (Daddy said: “US Airways is the most insane/inane airline — the announcement was how by signing up for a US Airways/Bank of America credit card you could get 20,000 bonus miles — then the co-pilot proceeded to walk down the aisle of the plane pitching brochures. This airline is seriously in need to being liquidated if they have to resort to that type of behavior.” I think: good riddance if it happens!) Anyway, I played with my new Thomas the Tank sticker book and watched a few short cartoons on Mommy’s laptop. Daddy sat across the aisle and read his book. I survived the first leg of the flight. YIPPIE!
Before my journey
Playing in the airport
On the plane
Sleeping on the plane…
Awake and cranky
So here is where the fun begins… we are safely in Philly and I ran up and down every concourse and row and chair and hallway I could find. I completely wore myself out running around. Then I had a terrible meltdown because the plane was delayed by 40 minutes…. then 1.5 hours…. then 2 hours…. then 4 hours!!!! Then it was 6 hours and a new plane! This is getting past silly. I am opting for finally falling asleep. We will see if this journey can get better. Wait, it did… our flight is now delayed 8.5 hours!!!! This is silly. They changed the gate so Mommy & Daddy put me in my stroller and wheeled me to the new waiting area. We were supposed to depart at 6:20pm… I fell asleep at 7:30p. I got restless in the stroller because I wanted to flip around so Mommy let me lay on the floor with her for a while until at 1:45am we FINALLY boarded the plane! FINALLY! The flight was wonderful with only a bit of turbulence. I was awake when we took off and landed but did some random sleeping in between. The flight crew even complimented how well I behaved! Even I as impressed. I was just so darn tired. We met a few families traveling on DCL with us… no DisBoarders yet though!!! 🙂 We spent a lot of the layover chatting with two teens from California… they were really nice and fun! 🙂
Me crashed at the first gate….
Moving towards gate #2
Crashed on the airport floor
We arrived in Barcelona and got off the plane on the tarmac and took a shuttle bus to the immigration area. We buzzed through quickly and then went to claim our hideously ugly bright colored luggage! BTW to all you travelers out there… the easy-kart (luggage carts) are FREE at the Barcelona airport… a MAJOR help! 🙂 We quickly got our luggage and went through customs (a TOTAL breeze). We walked through the exit and there was the Disney Cruise Line people…waiting for us. Mommy & Daddy said they figure since there were so few of us arriving today that they didn’t have busses running. We got a personal driver and a 30 minute ride to our hotel (Hilton Diagonal Mar Barcelona) we got unloaded and Daddy went to get currency from the ATM. Mommy & I took a quick back (only a bathtub in our room!) and then waited for Daddy to get cleaned up. I played with the bidet, took all the telephones off the walls, raided the mini-bar and made stinky diapers (Mommy said gross to share but I was awesome about stinky diapers and didn’t do one the entire 24 hours of travel). We went and bought diapers at AlCampo (A store like Super target). They don’t sell my brand in Spain! Mommy & Daddy bought some off-brand and they are HORRID (Dodot??). Tomorrow we go buy a pack of Huggies to last us until Italy where I can get REAL diapers.. Maybe this will be incentive to just finish potty learning… 🙂 MAYBE! 🙂 We picked up some snacks and are now in the room and ready to crash. Mommy and Daddy are crossing fingures that I sleep all night!
BTW: From our hotel window we just looked out and can see the Magic pulling into port!!!!! It is just about 9:30pm… tell me if we were wrong.. but it sure looks like it! 🙂 WOOHOO!
I am off o try to sleep… Good-night folks.
Tomorrow we are going to try to take the hop on and off bus and if we are rested and awake we will try to join the fellow DIS people at the magic fountains! 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing your journey and for the info about the airport in Barcelona and the DCL greeters. I’m glad you all arrived safe and sound in spite of all the delays and I know you’ll have a wonderful trip. We’re going mid-July and hopefully any kinks will be all worked out by then. Looking forward to your blog.
Sweet man! Don’t forget to have your mom take lots of pictures for my mom, and have fun. My mom thinks that you did about a million times better then I would have done 😀 You know I have to keep her on her toes! Have fun with Mickey, and tell him Ethan says hi.