Europe we LOVE YOU: day one//august 24th//in transit

Trippin' in the Chicago airport.

I've never professed to love travel.
Destinations, yes, but travel, absolutely not. Due in large part (I believe) to my propensity to get motion sick.
But traveling without the kiddos is remarkably...less intense to put it simply.

waiting to board our flight slc>>chicago.

on our flight slc>>chicago.

Annie, Cole and I had a flight out of SLC about 8:30 am Monday morning and met Kevin (who flew from Houston) at the airport in Chicago. He'd been there for hours already and "had" to show us the trippy tunnel from one side of the airport to the other and the dinosaur, as they are the most exciting things in the entire airport Kevin found out while he waited for us and our flight out.

I spy my three traveling companions. 

Our United flights had in-plane or on-app free TV shows and movies...which was a very good thing since, despite my best efforts (eye mask, sleeping pill, noise canceling headphones, white noise app) was not able to sleep a wink on any of our flights. Pretty amazing especially considering sister had kept me up all but about 2 hours the night before (as I mentioned here). None of my traveling companions had the same problem, I really should have taken sleeping pictures, nothing more flattering than a "sleeping on a flight" picture... At least they had the new Cinderella, Inside Out, and McFarland, USA (none of which I'd seen) on the flights.

on our flight chicago>>budapest.

annie+cole chicago>>budapest.

We approached Budapest just as it was getting to be midnight for our body clocks and morning in Europe.  I caught glimpses (aisle seat) of ten story communist housing but none of the big buildings or even the Duna River that runs between Buda and Pest.
I couldn't help but remember the first time I'd flown into Budapest years earlier, serving as a full-time LDS missionary in Hungary for 18 months. At the time I hoped (I love big cities), but didn't know, that I'd serve more than a third of my mission in the city.  
All the flight attendants huddled around the windows to catch sights of the beautiful city and, much like my second descent into Budapest, I hadn't slept a wink, and all I could think was "I'm going to have to talk to all those people, in Hungarian..." I was scared to death.
This time I was not scared to death, a little nervous, I suppose, to see how our trip overall unfolded.  Hoping we'd be able to figure everything out, especially in the places we'd never been and where the language was truly foreign to us.
I was nervous to see how my city felt this time around though. Would I find out that I'd just remembered it better than it was? Would I remember it? Would it feel foreign again? Most of all would I still completely love it?
Our flight got in as scheduled and we quickly made our way through the airport to find a public transport ticket counter so we could make our way into the city.  We all decided to pack a carryon and one small bag so we didn't have to do any baggage checking even though we all got one free checked bag with our tickets. Each couple had an empty duffel in case we picked up enough stuff to need an extra bag on the way home, we didn't end up using them. But, later on our flights within Europe we were reminded again and again that an American "carry on" is NOT the same as a European "carry on".  Ha.
I digress.  We were off.

Budapest airport...I spy a water bottle falling out of Cole's backpack, not for the first (or the last) time. :)