To England and France, part one

Our recent vacation to see family in England and France.

Dear friends, I have my fingers tightly crossed that today’s post and the posts for the rest of the week aren’t going to come across as too indulgent!

For what I have planned this week is to share the experiences that Jean and I had when we flew from Oregon to Europe, leaving on 8th April and returning on the 26th.

Come the day of our departure the morning presented low clouds and persistent rain. It was a four-hour drive North on Highway I-5 and our plan was to be away by 8am. Our home-sitter cum pet-sitter, Jana, would be arriving around 9:30.

Inevitably, I couldn’t sleep that well and it was not long after 7:30am that Jean and I drove down our driveway to start the journey to Portland International Airport. It was rain the whole way and not an easy drive; to say the least. Especially when overtaking the many trucks when the spray was pretty grim!

The Portland skies were just as wet and dreary as the drive up had been.

Anyway, we had arrived without any hitches and it was time to forget about the car for nearly three weeks and start getting ourselves into holiday mood.

Then on the very dot of the scheduled time for departure, as in 15:40, our Icelandic Air flight FI664 rotated skywards en route for London Gatwick via a short stop at Reykjavik.

Airborne!

To our great amazement the total flight time of over ten hours passed reasonably smoothly and before we knew it we were catching a taxi from London Gatwick to my daughter’s house in the village of Lindfield just 20 minutes away from the airport.

By mid-day on Monday the 12th we were at my daughter’s house and sitting down to a lunch snack with Maija, my daughter, and Morten, my seven-year-old grandson.

The plan was to spend a few days with Maija, and her husband Marius, and above all with Morten and I will cover what we did over those days in tomorrow’s post.

12 thoughts on “To England and France, part one”

    1. While technically we flew into Iceland both on the way out and on the return flight it was just a change of planes. So we didn’t get to see any of the country. Shame! For I suspect that it would be a very interesting country to visit.

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  4. So enjoyed all of your travel episodes Paul, I did not comment upon them all, but so loved reading and your Grandson what a handsome young man.. I bet you are all so proud of him.. And My granddaughter is now the same age.. We Grandparents I know are so proud of our Grandchildren. 😀 So pleased you had such a wonderful time all of you.. 🙂

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