YES!
Today, 24th of July 2022, we will start our vacation to the USA. We have made a great itinerary for the whole road trip. We are thrilled to get started.
Yesterday, Mathilde came back from her summer camp with the cub scouts. This was also her last camp with the kids after being a leader for 12 years. So we had to do some quick washes and packing our backpacks before going to sleep for a couple of hours.
Early transfer to the airport.
It is 4:15 am when the alarm clock wakes us, so we can get a shower before Mathilde her brother picks us up to bring us to the airport and catch our flight what is scheduled at 10:20 am.
We know what you’re thinking: “That’s on time before departure”. Normally we would never be that early on the airport, but because of shortage of ground staff on the Amsterdam Airport there are huge queues before the customs.
Arriving at the airport, we wanted to use the baggage drop-off and get in line, but the drop-off wasn’t working and had to get in line for the check-in first.
Finally, it was already 7:00 am when we could get in line for getting through customs.
At 8 o’clock we were in the coffee bar, patiently waiting for boarding.
A stopover at Zurich Airport
Because we are flying with Swiss airline, we first had a flight from Amsterdam to Zurich. Yes, that’s the opposite direction, we know. Here will have a transfer of three hours, so more than enough time to catch the next flight, so we went to see some shops and bought something to eat. We were just walking around the departure hall and were wondering why there was a long queue right in front of a small desk with no signs on it.
Ruben walked to someone in line to ask what the line is about. They told us it was a line for getting a stamp on your boarding car for a flight to the USA. So we went to an official desk and asked if we needed a stamp. YES, everybody flying from Zurich to the USA will need a stamp before boarding. They told us you had to get your ESTA checked and show if you had the needed Corona shots. We told them it was never been said and that there were no signs about it. So we got in line, but were really in a stress if we could board on time.
We got the stamp, but they didn’t really look at our papers at all.
Finally, the flight was delayed half an hour because of this.
But all well, we are on the right way to the USA.
Customs…waiting again.
Finally, we landed at Los Angeles Airport (LAX). I don’t think someone will ever like a flight so long, but we’re paying our dues.
But now we are out of the airplane, we already see a big line before customs. It seems to be very busy, because they want to do an extra check because of the corona shots.
We were in line for about two hours before it was our turn. After giving our fingerprints, we were allowed to get through and get our luggage. We were glad that we found our bags and went to the exit. After finding out how it worked, we could hop on a transfer to the taxi parking.
Here we got a Lyft. This was a cheaper option to get to our hotel for the first night.
We have booked a room in the Kings-Inn in Anaheim. By the time we arrived here, it was already 10:30 pm and wanted to eat something. So we went to P.F. Changs. We didn’t hear about this food chain before. They sell all types of Asian food and we really liked it. When it was already 11:30 pm it was time to get some sleep, because we didn’t sleep very much the last 28 hours from the moment we woke up at home.
Tomorrow it will be a long day again.
