4 Countries in 24 Hours

Before we left for the airport at 2:30am Thursday morning, I said to David "I don't care what happens on the flights, I just don't want anyone to throw up." I should have kept my big mouth shut! David and I stayed up Wednesday night figuring it was stupid to go to bed for 2 hours since we were being picked up at 2:30am. The kids had gone to bed in their clothes for the trip, so we woke them right before we were leaving. They were very excited and were wide awake. We got to the airport around 3 and were at the gate before 4am for our 5am flight to Zurich. We saw Arjon (Boaz's father) who was going to Japan and hung out with him for a little bit. The kids entertained themselves by running around and looking out the windows at all the planes. Eli is obsessed with airplanes at the moment so he was especially happy.
For some odd reason, it was extremely foggy in Israel that morning and our incoming plane was having a hard time landing and had to be diverted to Cyprus. It was becoming more and more clear that we were not going to make our 10:30 connection in Zurich, but we were reassured that everyone was in the same situation and that we would all be re-booked on later flights. I won't go into all the details, but basically we found out that we were most likely going to be put not on a direct flight from Zurich to JFK, but with a stop-over in London.
We got to Zurich and had to walk through the entire airport to go to the transfer desk only to have to go all the way back across the airport again to get to the gate for the flight to London. At the transfer desk, Eli was really cranky and was crying and making a lot of noise. A woman behind the counter suggested that one of us take him to the children's play area, clearly saying that he was annoying and we should take him away. I said to her "we've been traveling since 3am and we missed our connection and now you are making us have an extra stop on our way to NY, so he is going to scream and you are going to have to deal with it." As I was in Zurich and no longer in Israel, she actually apologized. We almost missed the London flight because it took them so long to get our tickets re-booked or whatever they were doing, and then when we got to the gate they wanted us to check our stroller all the way through to NY rather than get it back at the gate in London. Right at that moment, both kids were having fits and I think they took pity on us because one of the gate agents took the stroller and said she was going to find a place inside the plane to put it so that we could have it when we got to London.
The flight was uneventful and we got to see the new terminal at Heathrow and then take a train and a bus and a 10 mile walk to get to our plane to NY. I have never been through so many security checks as we had to go through in London. I was frisked 3 or 4 times and all of our carry on bags were emptied out as well. And, they made me drink from Eli's bottle and Simon's sippy cup. I still don't know what the point of that is.
At least when we got on the plane to NY, we found that they gave us the bulk-head and they gave us all 5 seats across. Unfortunately for the people in First Class, we were the row right behind them and there wasn't even a curtain separating, so they had to deal with a very unhappy Eli. A flight attendant came over and asked if we needed anything for him because we were pretty much just letting him lie on the floor and scream because at that point he was just so tired that there was nothing we could do. I told the stewardess that he was just tired and needed to go to sleep and she said "well it's been crying since you got on board..." Yes, she called my baby "IT." I told her she'd be crying too if she'd had the day that he had. He fell asleep right after we took off and slept for the entire flight. Simon was amazing throughout the whole ordeal because he is the best traveler.
We finally arrived in NY at 7pm, only 6 hours later than planned and almost exactly 24 hours after we left our apartment. Huvi picked us up and I honestly don't remember anything else from Thursday night because I was so tired! The kids went to bed at some point, but unfortunately both woke up at 5:30am for the day.
I got to do some shopping on Friday which was so nice. No Target yet, but hopefully tomorrow!
Shabbos was really really nice and I'll write more about it in the next post because I need to go to sleep now.