Great Britain Day 1-2 Travel nightmares!

Day 1-2 of trip to Great Britain were mostly devoted to travel and boy oh boy was it fun!

First diaster struck actually the day before we were scheduled to leave.  Hop! (Air France's regional carrier) went on strike and our flight from Paris to Birmingham was cancelled.  As much as I like flying Air France, it seems at least every other time we fly with them somebody is on strike.  Thankfully they gave us a heads up and after a very stressful 3 hours we were able to get on earlier flights.  That really wasn't good for Lincoln's sleep schedule but at least we were going to get here!

Thanks to my mom and sister Kate for watching Lincoln while we frantically packed and got ready for our flights!

Full van on the way to MSP

Belle knew we were leaving and seemed very sad.  She will have a good time with Kate and my parents though!

Happy boy at the airport.  So were we after some inital stress.  Security actually went ok, we didn't have to take everything out which was great!  Still there was lots of stuff to move through the airport!  Then when we got to the gate we found out that there were lots of babies and of course we didn't have a bassinet seat assigned (we were in 2 middle seats on oppostie sides of the plane).  Thankfully probably because our tickets were so screwed up from having our itinerary completely changed which changed our booking code we were able to get moved into bassinet seats.  After a nice 2 hour wait at the gate and getting our last Caribou and meal at French Meadow we were ready to board!

First group of people on the plane so thankfully we got all our stuff put away and settled before the completely full plane started boarding.  Lincoln managed to scream for the first 30 min after takeoff, but was otherwise pretty good for the flight

Lincoln was not very much interested in sleeping, but he was ok with playing with the bassinet buckles and watching the secret life of pets

Lincoln's bed.  Seemed like a good idea, although he only managed to sleep for about 1.5 hours of the 8 hours we were on the plane.  

Chillin in his own seat while we waited to get off after all the people

Quick starbucks breakfast in Paris.  Every single time we go through CDG something has to go wrong.  This time it was a mess getting through security.  They made us take out everything.  Then they had issues with something in my bag.  We latter figured out this is probably when Lincoln's medicine got lost.  Thankfully it is just vitamin D plus some things we can probably find over here.  Another issue was the lack of working elevator to get to our stupid ground level gate.  Then we were on a tiny plane so we had to take a bus and then climb the stairs.  Not exactly the most fun thing to do with a stroller and a million bags.

Climbing onto the tiny plane

And yet another travel disaster at the Birmingham airport (at least the flight itself was ok and the male flight attendant seemed to like Lincoln).  First issue was they checked our stroller to the baggage claim after security.  Then the customs line had only one person working for anybody without an EU passport, and no babies don't let you jump the line.  We finally made it out of that line and found what happened to our stroller.  It was probably at this point that I lost my breast pump bag which Zach has also zipped some of Lincoln's toys into.  I filed a report with missing luggage at the airport, but nothing has been found so far.  Finally after all that mess it took nearly 2 hours of waiting in line to get our rental car.  They don't reserve cars in advance so the line was super super slow.  Then we Zach finally got up there they decided we need to pay double of rental fee because of some insurance they claim we need (but we are sure our credit card company covers!).  Still waiting on a company response to that one.  Next up was the half mile walk to the rental cars

Our rental car got upgraded to a small minivan.  I guess that was good for the amount of stuff, but it made Zach's first driving experience on the wrong side even more fun.  The drive was very stressful between being on the wrong side, not knowing the area, remembering how to drive stick and the endless roundabouts.  Thankfully we made it finally all in one piece.

Our home for the first 5 nights is the Hampton Inn on Broad Street.  The hotel is giant.  Our room is pretty small, but the bed is big enough for Lincoln to crawl around on and play with toys.  After feeding and play time we all finally got to take about a 2.5 hour nap (first time really sleeping since we left MSP for Zach and I)

After our nap we went out to see our surroundings and find some dinner.

Cool looking memorial to WWII on the way to dinner

Dinner was fish and chips to go from a well reviewed place.  Zach was completely out of it and managed to order an insane amount of fish and fries for each of us.

The view from our room while we ate

Dinner!  Like I said way way way to many fries, but it was pretty good.  We also had stopped for a beer and cider on the way back.  The beer was supposed to be an IPA but it was truly terrible (like skunky Budweiser level).  We didn't even managed to drink half of it, but the cider was more drinkable.  

After dinner we spent about an hour figuring out a plan.  Lincoln kept doing really well.  We put him to bed at 10:30 without too much fuss.  He woke up at 1:30, ate and screamed for 30 min, then woke up at 5:00 for food and finally for good at 9:00.  All in all he seems to be a pretty good traveling baby which is great news for us!

Can't wait to start exploring and start the conference tomorrow night :-)