Epic trip of 2015: part I, getting there

Every once in a while we take a vacation that in my head ends up in the 'epic' category.

This is the beginning of one of those.

The basics: Curt and I left the kids with my mom (thanks a million mom!) and went on a Mediterranean cruise.

This was to celebrate our 10th anniversary.

It's not until May, but I'm good with being flexible on celebration timing.

You've got to take what you can get when cruise times, non-tourist season, vacation times, etc can line up.

We flew the kids from Atlanta to Salt Lake on Saturday, November 7th.

{McDonald's pancakes seem to be a tradition for morning flights}

{these guys are getting to be little travel pros}

{the view coming in was so clear...miss my mountains}

Curt flew back to Atlanta that night so he could play the organ at church the next day and go to work Monday-Wednesday while I got the kids settled and in a routine at mom's.

{cute little cousin friends}

{another pair of cousins destined to be friends}

One of the mornings we went to my cousin's house to visit with a bunch of my cousins and my aunt and uncle. We have a lot of kids. Super fun.

And we had some snow.

The kids were so excited to see it, doesn't happen very often in Georgia.

I was planning on flying to Atlanta on Wednesday and joining Curt on a flight from Atlanta to Paris that night, but flights were full so I ended up flying straight to Paris from Salt Lake.

{one of the Paris luggage claims}

It worked out great. Curt's flight got in an hour after mine and we met up outside of customs.

{I thought the structure of the attached train station was neat.}

We grabbed some food (from a place called Paul's, simple but yummy ham/cheese/baguette/butter sandwich) and waited a few hours for our flight to Venice.

{I was tired, I didn't sleep very well on the overnight flight}

 We flew a cheap European line to Venice and it was interesting.

The plane got loaded so quickly, half of the people going at the front, half at the back.

When we got to the small Venice airport it was fairly late and we couldn't find our hotel shuttle and didn't really understand how everything worked so we just took a cab. 

And then we got some blessed sleep.

We were able to pretty much stay in contact with people during our entire trip because the airports and many cafe's had free wifi and then we purchased the wifi package on the ship.

We just kept our phones on airplane mode so as not to use carrier networks.

So reassuring to have that connection.

Love the day and age we live in.

Next up, Venice.