An Auspicious Beginning

And so it begins. After months of planning and many fond farewells, we left Hamburg yesterday and flew to London Heathrow. Unfortunately, an overnight stop was required to get a reasonably priced ticket from Hamburg to Indianapolis. But luckily, the stopover was a pleasant one as we spent the night at Jo's brother's place in Farnham where we celebrated the beginning of our trip with some delicious home brew and toasted our recent engagement with champagne. We were also treated to a lovely clarinet and violin concert courtesy of Jo's niece and nephew.

In the morning, we hitched a ride back to Heathrow with Jo's brother on his way to work. We arrived at the airport quite early for our flight, but luckily we were able to check our bags straight away and head to the British Airways Executive Lounge courtesy of Jo's Silver Status! (See, all of those trips to LA did pay off.) As an added bonus, when we got to the gate, we were pleasantly surprised to find we had been bumped up to business class. Quite an auspicious beginning to a "budget" trip around the world...





Customs and passport control at JFK were a breeze ("Germany huh, wie geht's?" was verbatim the only question Nick was asked) and all of our bags arrived in one piece. Our flight to Indianapolis was uneventful where Nick's mother picked us up at the airport. We made the obligatory stop (for Nick after months without) at Taco Bell on the way home and headed straight to bed after a LONG day of travel. One day down, another 180-some more to go.

- Nick and Jo