Eurotrip adventures part 1

I figure it's high time to write up my family's trip to Lithuania this past summer. Where to begin? Well first off it took about 3 days to get there. Original itinerary was Cleveland to NJ to Gattwick, London to Vilnius, Lithuania. There were storms on the east coast, so we missed our flight to NJ and instead hopped on a direct flight to Gattwick. After arriving in Gattwick, we found out we had missed our connecting flight to Vilnius (no surprise). After running from ticket counter to ticket counter all day, we finally gathered up enough info on how to continue our journey. It involved a £98 cab ride to Heathrow airport, and staying overnight in two hotel rooms (£180/each), because the Brits are anal retentive about having more than 2 people in a room.

Next morning at the crack of dawn, we boarded Lot Airlines to take us into Warsaw. It would have been a two hour flight. An hour into the flight, the pilot informs us (in Polish) that there has been a malfunction in the computer system and that we must turn around and land back at Heathrow. This big u-turn of a flight took -- you guessed it -- two hours. As soon as we deplaned, we tried to make a B-line for the Lot ticket counter, except we kept getting stopped by Customs. After wandering around the airport for a half hour, we made it to the ticket desk only to find that everyone from our flight was already in queue. A boring 5 hours of waiting in line went by. The customer service agent wanted us to spend another night in London and fly out the next morning, but we had none of that and flew at that same night.

We finally arrived in Warsaw after midnight, and stayed at the airport hotel whose rooms smelled liked smoked kielbasa. Not only was I terribly jet lagged, but also my OCD old man decided to wash his socks in the sink and blow dry them at 2 AM and then dry them again at 6 AM. I had the lovely misfortune of sharing a room with him.

Did I also mention that we weren'travelingng with our luggage because it was still sitting on our original flight from out of the U.S.? On the morning of day 3 we finally boarded an airplane that used to giant propellers and consequently didn't fly higher than a 1000 feet or so. I could clearly see all the cows and goats in peoples' back yards. We finally made it to Vilnius!

Much to our surprise, our luggage had actually arrived an hour before us, so we had all of our belongings. We had rented a car from this dude called Rimas who was a very jolly fellow with rosy cheeks and a big beard. He also thought that it would be an awesome idea to rent us a giant '88 conversion van. You know -- the kind that's as wide as a shed and is taller than any Lithuanian basketball player. Lucky for us my old man drives as well as the name I call him. It goes without saying that I nearly shat myself every time he got behind the wheel. My mom had the good sense to call up Rimas and get us a "smaller" automobile. Convinced we Americans love big cars, he brought to us the next day...a Lincoln Towncar dubbed "the boat" by everyone who laid eyes upon it.

There I leave off until I have another spare moment to continue writing my adventures in foreign lands.