Thursday, 29 June, 2017:
Excited by our flight home to California this morning, we were both up early to shower and check the weight of all four
of our pieces of luggage one more time.
Our two check-in bags were just a hair under the allowed 20 kilos limit but the two carry-on pieces were going to be close on the 10 kilos limit.
At Los Angeles last April, both of my bags were weighed.
That was the first time that I can recall my carry-on being weighed before a flight and it was way overweight back in April. Thus I had to pay a $60 fine for the four extra kilos I was taking with me then on my Norwegian Airlines flight.
After making some hard decisions on what to take and what to leave behind, all of our bags met the required kilos limit.
We were ready!
A big TACK SÅ MYCKET/THANK YOU to the ever reliable Jesper Douhan who picked us up at the house and drove us to Arlanda Airport.
We were at Stockholm's international airport by 8:00 a.m., a full three hours and 45 minutes early for our non-stop flight to Los Angeles.
As you know, it is recommended that passengers arrive at the airport at least three hours before international flights. We wanted to be there extra early to weigh our bags one more time on the official airport scales and have time for any re-sorting if it was needed.
In only took us about ten minutes to do some minor re-packing to get the four bags all under the maximum weight limits.
We were ready to go and the bag check-in line was short.
Norwegian Airlines flight DY7087
HERE WE COME!
That's when my cell phone beeped
with this information
Our 11:45 a.m. flight takeoff time had been delayed a full FOUR HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES!
That meant that we had about eight hours and 30 minutes to get intimately acquainted with all of Stockholm's beautiful Arlanda Airport.
This really should not have surprised us too much as my flight on Norwegian Air last April was about two hours and 15 minutes late.
Laurie's initial Norwegian Air experience last May involved arriving in Stockholm about an hour and 45 minutes tardy.
Norwegian Air:
"Europe's NEVER On-Time Budget Airline"
To make us feel better, they
gave us two Meal Vouchers
worth 150 Swedish krona each
Once we got through the Security Lines in a timely fashion, we found a restaurant and ordered 299 Swedish krona's worth of food for lunch.
I felt better, but we needed more.
Time to hit one of the airport's booksellers.
This one looked good to me
Laurie wanted this one
after I told her good things
about author Peter May
So, we found two comfortable chairs, plopped down and began to read and/or surf the web for the rest of the day.
Finally it was time!
Not so fast, it was 4:30 p.m. and we had not even started the boarding process yet.
We finally were allowed to board quickly and pushed away from the gate at 5:04 p.m., five hours and 19 minutes later than scheduled.
The 11 hour flight itself was actually quite smooth and comfortable.
Finally, . . .
We were home not only
in Los Angeles but . . .
In the UNITED STATES
of AMERICA too!
And not one photo of President Trump anywhere we looked.
Son Michael and grandson Jacob picked us up at LAX. It was GREAT to see them both.
In keeping with the theme of the day, the drive home that should only take an hour took over two hours.
Oh how I have missed Los Angeles traffic.
One more tradition to take care of before arriving at home.
Dinner at Camarillo Cronies!
On all nine of our previous EuroBall experiences, we have eaten our breakfast at Cronies before flying to Europe. On the previous eight returns we had dinner at Cronies too.
Make that nine dinners now as the tradition continued in full force tonight with a solid meal for all of us..
Souvenirs from two months
in Sweden, Estonia, Finland,
Latvia and Spain
Reading Is FUNdamental
As I said, we had a lot of time
to kill today and reading this
book helped a lot
I learned a lot about this fascinating subject at the Arlanda Airport and on the Norwegian Airlines flight today.
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