Danube Waltz Viking River Cruise
Day 1: Saturday, October 19, 2019 - Travel
This really isn't the first day of travel on the cruise, but rather it is the first day of our travel on our vacation. We had a flight out of PHL (Philadelphia) at 10:05. PM. The ole famous red-eye.
Because it was so late, we had the day to mow the lawn, have a hair cut, eat lunch, and go to church. We packed the car and intended on leaving from the church since it was ten minutes closer to the airport. We stopped on the way to the airport at Subway to get a foot long for dinner. We parked the car in the ExpressPark South lot and were shuttled to the terminal, and arrived at 7:45. We checked our bags and found that they were both exactly the same weight - 31.5 pounds.
We had PreCheck and were through security in no time. It was better to be early than late. We more or less strolled to the terminal since we had so much time. We even looked in a couple shops to help kill some time. We were at gate A26, which is the absolutely last gate in terminal A. Our seating area was shared with A24 wherein people were gathering for a 9:10 flight to Dublin. After they boarded - starting about 8:30 - there were only about a half-dozen or so of us left. We had red Viking Cruises luggage tags provided to us for our luggage. As ours was checked, we would help put them to use when we picked up our luggage. But we saw a couple approaching the seating area with them on their luggage and knew they were obviously going on the same cruise we were.
So far, our 10:05 flight to Heathrow is currently... ON TIME!
We started to board at 9:30, and the other couple, Connie and Steve from Fairhill, MD, happened to be seated right in front of us. Before I introduced ourselves, I leaned over the seatback and said to them "I couldn't help but notice your blatently obvious red Viking River Cruise tags and assume you are going on the Danube River cruise like we are?" They agreed. We wound up leaving the gate at 10:10, just five minutes late. We taxied around the airport for literally 20 minutes before we finally made our way onto the runway for take-off.
We ascended to 39,000 feet. During said acent, I captured a couple pictures of the east coast - it looks like New Jersey.
It was late, we were tired and tried to get some sleep. However, a woman in the end seat across the aisle two rows up was doing
some paperwork. And she had a very bright cell phone light.
As it bothered me, I can only image how annoying it must have been for those closer or even in her row. After having dozed off
for a short time, I was awoken by dinner service at 11:59 PM EST. We declined as we had already eaten the sandwich from Subway.
I saw someone eating a brownie and asked the flight attendant if we could each have one. He said he didn't have them separate but
could give us the cheese and cracker tray that included it - so we obliged. The tray included spreadable cheese, crackers, a small
green salad, the brownie, and a 250ml bottle of water (which we held onto for later).
It was now past midnight - and a new day.