Kodiak Haakansons: The epic journey out of Europe...

A little bit melodramatic- we were actually on the way home from the theater kids were ready for bed. But couldn't pass up a good photo opp. that sums up our 'refugree status' along with a few thousand others.

I woke up on our last day in Paris (Saturday) to a wonderful sound: a totally quiet apartment! I sat down with coffee at the computer to check our email and received an email from British Airways about our Sunday morning flight from Paris to London. Cancelled due to snowfall, along with all of Saturday’s flights. ?!*&! They indicated a number to call to rebook but after 20 minutes of calling and not even getting put on hold, and after realizing that rebooking online wouldn’t work either I started researching other ways of getting home. A one way ticket from Paris to Boston would be $1300 per person, almost double what we paid for our round trip ticket! And most of them flew through London anyway. Sven had the smart idea to book the Eurostar train from Paris to London, but that meant leaving late at night to make our 11 am flight to Boston. But with little other choice and thinking that would be an easy way to get to LHR, we did it (and with a little warning message that there were only ten seats left on the last train out of Paris), rapidly packing up our belongings and shifting a scheduled lunch in the north of Paris to Rue Mouffetard.

We met our friends Gwen and Daniel (and their toddler Sasha) for a wonderful last meal: lentils and gloriously fatty smoked sausage for the girls and steaks for us. Afterwards we munched down some warm tarte tatin. With every thing we saw Bella sadly said, “Good bye yummy French bread!” “Au revoir yummy apple tart”. As the snow (an auspicious omen, it would turn out) started falling we headed home to finish our packing. By 5 the girls were stir crazy so I took Bella out for an errand run to take a ride on the little neighborhood kiddie ride, which ended up being free! The streets were starting to get slushy and messy and after going home we decided to head to Gare Du Nord extra early to get our train to Paris.

It was on the ride to the station that we first realized how difficult this snow was for Paris. Our taxi driver didn’t know how to deal with fogged up windows and either hit a motorcyclist or a motorcyclist hit him (no injuries). The station was frigid and crowded with people starting at the arrivals and departures board with its long list of delayed trains. We headed upstairs to the Eurostar section and got ourselves in line just as an announcement came on that all seats on Eurostar for that day were sold out and people (mostly foreign college students) around us groaned. We did make it on the train all right, but the train was running an hour behind due to speed restrictions, so we sat back and enjoyed the ride on the comfy Eurostar from about 9 to midnight.

Upon arrival we had a touchy choice: brave the tube with our numerous pieces of luggage, most of them just at max weight (due to our luggage scale) or catch a spendy taxi to our hotel. We looked at the huge line and huge stairway into the tube station and decided on a taxi. Of course the queue for the taxis was 20 people long and outside in the snow, but 45 minutes later when we were in the big old London cab chatting with the driver we decided that it was well worth it. We arrived at the Sheraton at around 2 am and somehow got the kids asleep by 3, setting the alarm for 6:15 in our aim to get out of the hotel by 7:20.

"bye bye yummy food" (Bella)

"Bye bye pretty, yummy fruit." (sad)

"bye bye chickens with heads, feathers and feet still on"

"bye bye beautiful cakes"

"bye bye free champagne tasting in the street" (Balika)

Rue Mouffetard getting ready for christmas.

Gare du Nord Terminal

Arriving in London's St. Pancras station

Sunday, December 19th- Somehow we did make it down to the lobby at 7:15 Sunday morning… the kids were amazing! But as Sven checked his email one last time before we got on the bus we found out that our Boston flight was cancelled. Thankfully, we were lucky and hadn’t checked out of the room yet so we charged back upstairs to get the internet connected and to figure out our next step. I got the room booked for another night (at double the price, unfortunately) while Sven tried to get through to British airways. We finally realized that this was a waste of time, as we couldn’t even get put on hold, so Sven (our hero!) headed into London Heathrow to see if he could find a person to talk to. The girls napped, I hit redial on skype to British Airways and dealt with some of our Boston planning changes, and Sven headed to where he was warned not to go: the place that armed guards had to go to alleviate the tension, the place that was supposedly closed, the place where thousands slept on the hard floor, where all flights were canceled that day: London Heathrow.

Apparently it really wasn’t too bad. When you’ve lived through Kodiak’s airport during the spring break or Christmas weather day I suppose nothing is too surprising. Just a 2 hour line to get rebooked (4 nights later!) and another 2 hour line to find out about reimbursement of some expenses (do it later) and he was back on the shuttle back to the hotel. Apparently, people were wonderful, just tired and confused. By the time that Sven was back at the hotel I’d booked us at an apartment in downtown London and found out that we had a pool in our current hotel so almost as soon as he’d walked in the door the girls had jumped on him and pleaded him to go swimming (poor guy with three hours sleep). After lunch in a strange sports bar we all relaxed in the gigantic pool in a sun-room-like interior courtyard, swimming under bridges and playing tag until our lips were blue.

The rest of the day was blissfully uneventful- dinner, reading and what we thought would be a wonderful early bedtime, but unfortunately Bella woke us all up and after she fell asleep at 9 the rest of us stayed up reading (and booking Mama Mia theater tickets for two days hense) until well after midnight. Grrrr.

In our hotel room.

Monday, December 20th- It was a wonderful morning- no stress about flights since we had one booked for three days later, 3 nights in London to look forward to, and a plan. We’d take the shuttle to the airport, store a couple of bags, and jump on the underground with the rest to go into London. Just a few hickups- the shuttle was 45 minutes late, causing lots of stress with people who were actually trying to catch flights; the underground was running slowly, but really all was well.

We were shocked to hear the announcements playing over Heathrow’s louspeaker as we walked in, “For those of you with cancelled flights, please leave the airport. We will not be rebooking you at this time. Please go home, call your airlines or rebook online. Please leave through the carpark elevators.” (side note: this was all with armed guards at the doors- as they turned away passengers from entering. Also- I know from experience that rebooking online requires actually PURCHASING another ticket- Who knows how long reimbursement would take. And calling is also not an option- it took me 11 hours of near-constant phoning to get through to a person on the first day of the cancellations. And you can’t even get put on hold. The message is, ‘we are sorry but we are experiencing an extremely high call volume. Please call back later. Click’

We checked into our hotel- actually a group of apartments north of Hyde Park in Bayswater and went out for a middle eastern meal. The apartment is quite large (2 bedrooms), a little dingy and dirty, but its not an airport floor, so we feel lucky.

We jumped on the metro and went towards the British Museum where Sven wanted to look at the North American collection. There were some amazing Alutiiq and Chugach objects and the girls really enjoyed looking at the Mexican materials, especially the Aztec snakes and Mixtec dolls with crazy expressions. Before leaving we walked through the room with the Lord Elgin marbles- otherwise known as chunks of the Athens’ Parthenon. We all sat down on the heated floor in a room the size of the Parthenon with its metops and pediment sculptures displayed in true monumental scale and read through the British Museums’ opinion paper about why they shouldn’t have to return them to Athens. We briefly looked at the Assyrian and early Greece rooms before having to leave for closing, but we pledged to return and do one of the kids’ actitivies on offer.

After the museum we walked down Oxford street, admired the Christmas shopping insanity and ate a little before heading home to our apartment and some snuggly family TV time. Nice.

Crowded! See Bella's eye down there?

Oxford Circus Tube Station

Aztec head from The British Museum

Parthenon re-enactment

Tuesday December 21st- We were all excited about going back to the British Museum today, as we’d only had an hour and a half there yesterday and the girls had been excited to find out about these wonderful children learning guides that they have. So back we went, and straight to Bella’s African Packet Challenge where she had to examine a beautiful Tree of Life (made of old rusted guns and ammunition from a civil war), look for patterns in textiles and look for shapes in masks. Fun! Then we headed up to the East Asian room to learn about Hinduism and Buddhism, armed with a backpack full of activities and a little lesson plan. It felt a little weird to be following a lesson plan with the kids, but it really was incredibly informative. We (all of us!) learned about stupas and how they are constructed, about why Ganesha has so many arms and who his parents are. We learned about the life of the Buddha and the instruments that are played in temples. And all the while we were surrounded by absolutely beautiful, fascinating objects.

These two activities were about all that we could fit in before lunch, so we headed towards the West End for our 3 oclock showing of Mama Mia, stopping along the way for Chinese. London was a bit drizzly and gray, both reminding us of home and making us miss home, and after a while we realized that we were all getting a little depressed (ready to go home!).

But we loved Mama Mia! The set was an amazing revolving contraption that went from Greek house, to beach, to taverna in seconds. The actors and acrtresses seemed to have a grand time and the crowd was on their feet by the end (dancing, many of them!). What a great story!

After the show, we grabbed some Indian food and jumped on the metro home for a little R & R. One more night (hopefully) in London!