Back in California

We’re back in California, as of some 30 minutes ago. The trip was mostly uneventful, and most of the heavy lifting was done by Finnur who had the honor of sitting with both kids on one side of the isle, while I lounged on the other side – like he did on the way to Iceland. Bjarki only slept for some 45 minutes on the first 8 hour long flight, but they both collapsed on the 1:42 long flight from Seattle to San Francisco.

The biggest problem we encountered was how Seattle treats “oversized” luggage, such as strollers and carseats. Instead of delivering them to the same location as the bags, they apparently hide them upstairs somewhere, and have people running around downstairs verifying that the passengers are there, and instructing them that their oversized luggages will either a) show up at the main baggage carousel in the main terminal (a mile away) or b) be forwarded to the connecting airplane.

The result was that we never saw our carseats, and of course, the carseats didn’t make it onto the connecting flight. Thankfully our bags did, but that was because we personally dropped them on the conveyor belt. I wish we had insisted on getting the carseats before going through the customs gate…

Thankfully, we were reunited with our stroller before going through customs, but that was only because we never got a proper luggage ticket for it. Instead, we checked it at the gate in Keflavik, so it had a lousy handwritten ticket, and was thus spared fates a) and b).

Oh, and I forgot that getting from Icelandair’s terminal to Alaska Airline’s terminal takes three trains! But that went mostly smoothly, although we could have easily gotten seriously sidetracked in the maze, if it hadn’t been for a helpful airport employee.

All in all, there were hardly any meltdowns, or disasters, and Augusto was kind enough to pick us up, and drive us home where he presented us with some milk, cheerios and fruit so that we’ll survive tomorrow morning. 🙂