Prague Blog #1

One of the parts of our 9 day trip to Prague for the Ultimate Frisbee World Championships that I was most worried about was the flying to London leg of the trip. It's just under 5 hours there and exactly 6 hours and 40 minutes back to Boston (the jet stream is a powerful force, eh). Finley's never been on a plane for longer than two hours in his short life and we had no idea how he'd do. We hopped on our Friday night plane and found our bulkhead seat where Finley would have a bassinet to sleep in.

He sat nicely while we put our bags up top and much to our surprise and joy, once we were in the air and the bassinet was hooked up--he slept for 90% of the ride! Unreal! We zipped him into his sleepsack (wearable, sleeveless blanket), read him his goodnight book, dropped him into the little basket, and handed him his owl lovey. He kicked and cooed for about 10 minutes before passing out. Sweet! A huge regret that I didn't snap a picture of him sleeping there,b but we couldn't risk the flash :) With Finley snoozing away, we were able to eat dinner and sleep for most of the flight. Sadly, he was quite a pain in the a-- for the second leg to Prague, but we can't have it all, can we?

Our trip home was a bit different...but not in a bad way. Here he is waiting to board the first leg to London.

Finley did better on this short leg this time around. We even found a good way for him to play while the seat belt sign was off.

After our layover in London, we were ready (more or less) for the long haul to Boston. However, British Airways threw us a curve ball by not sitting us in the bulkhead row, which meant no bassinet to plop Finley in for any part of the almost 7 hour ride. Eek. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't ticked. Apparently there were 9 infants on board and Finley was not one of the lucky ones to get preferred seating arrangement. Instead we had a window and a middle seat.OMG. Thankfully, the guy with the aisle spot in our row agreed to take the window. Thank you kind sir! Overall, Finley was a HUGE champ. He slept a little on Dan, a lot on me, and played nicely on our laps, in the back of the plane, and enjoyed being walked around. Our good friendsSangwha, Josh, and baby Eliot were coming back from Italy (a coincidence, or what?) so we got to chat with them on the plane, which was a great way to pass the time. We were SO proud of Finley for handling this flight so smoothly, it's nice to be pleasantly surprised once in a while :)

Overall, British Airways was a pleasure to fly. Nice flight attendants, plenty of free beverages, surprisingly good meals (minus the veggie lasagna Dan had on the way over), safe baggage handling, and since Finley got us in the "fast track" check in and security lines our wait time was pretty minimal. However, Dan did spent a good half hour on the phone with BA this morning trying to figure out why we weren't given a bulkhead for the ride home (no definitive answer just yet...).

I'm happy to say that after such long flights, flying to VA to see my parents in the near future will certainly be a breeze!