More planes and long travel days!

Our flight was at 2.45pm in the afternoon to Munich, we figured we had some time for a final walk along the Riva, coffee and gelato.

Of course by the time we actually finished all that we were cutting it pretty close for checking into our flight on time. We arrived at the airport by 1.15pm, got Evie to sleep, checked in, returned our rentals and had some lunch. I hadn’t actually looked at our boarding pass for our boarding time, figuring like most airports there’d be a notice on the flight board when we needed to go to the gate.

I was wrong.

The problem with security is they always make me take Evie out of her front pack even if she is fast asleep, so we decided to wait as long as we thought we could to go through so she could sleep. We actually started going through security at 2.15pm and by the time we got through and towards passport control it was closer to 2.30pm.

Then the announcement was made “this is the final boarding call for the Eurowings flight to Munich”. Oops it looked like we were running very late, a minute later the announcement was made “Announcing the departure of Eurowings flight to Munich.” With a long queue in front of us that wasn’t moving we started to panic, surely they weren’t going to leave 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time?

Thankfully an airport staffer appeared and called for the final passengers, we got fast tracked to the front of the queue. Despite this the passport control officer took his sweet time checking and stamping our passports, he wasn’t too interested in how late we were, more that he was doing his job correctly. I’m very pleased to say that we did get on the plane and were in our seats by 2.40pm. I have never cut boarding a plane that close in my life and don’t plan to ever again!

The flight went without a hitch and we arrived in Munich at 4pm. Unfortunately as is always the case at airports, the flight is the fastest part of any travel day. It took us over an hour to get to the baggage claim, collect our bags and pick up our rental car. Add to that the fact that we then had to drive for 50 minutes to our hotel for the evening, it is fair to say that we were exhausted. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to doing it all again the next day either!

Just to top it all off when we finally arrived at our supposed 1 bedroom apartment in Munich, it turned out to be a studio. Albeit a large studio with a very nice bathroom, it still didn’t have a separate bedroom. Good old Kiwi ingenuity won out plus our trusty black cloth pinned across the luggage area meant that Thea had a semi dark bedroom and Evie ended up in her portacot in the bathroom.

Steph and Andy had picked up burgers for dinner and we had a nice but very quiet final dinner together before falling into bed exhausted.

Our flight to Copenhagen the next morning was scheduled to depart at 11am, that meant we had to get up and go as soon as possible in the morning. We managed to be out the door by 7.45am and thankfully the traffic was pretty light on a Saturday so we arrived at the airport by 8.30am.

Even better the Lufthansa counters had a dedicated check in desk for families with infants so we got to skip the massive queue at the other counters! Go us and go Lufthansa for being so family friendly!

We got through security eventually and to our gate by 10.10am, to be told our flight was delayed by 25 minutes. But at least we weren’t late, the plane was instead. This did mean that we were delayed on the other end so Craig missed his craft beer tour!

I never really understood why you had to be at an airport 3 hours before a flight when we travelled without children. But now, as a parent with two kids under 4, I totally understand! Not only that but even my rental car from the aiport this time proved more work with it being in a separate location only reached via a shuttle bus.

If I haven’t already showed you our luggage, here it is. Can you imagine getting all of that on a bus and two kids? Well we did it, thankfully.

We took the car upgrade for 6Euro a day, the amount of luggage we had demanded it. Later in the week we also planned to take the girls to visit my cousins, Lillian and Flemming, in Nakskov about a 2 hour drive from Copenhagen so a comfy car ride was a must.

Arriving at our spacious apartment was a welcome relief after such a huge two days of travel. Our hosts met us there and had left us some goodies to enjoy. A quick trip to the supermarket, a play on the complex’s playground and some dinner later we all went to bed.