The flight over was interesting... I first flew from Orlando to Atlanta: a short, quick and easy hour and a half. I was in the very last row on the plane (I thought for a minute that they were going to out me put on one of the wings!), but I had a window seat, which was nice. There was no one in the seat next to me so I leaned against the wall and stretched out toward the aisle with my book. It was nice...we were there before I knew it. But, being in the very last row, and toting a whole bunch of stuff (the cat included), I was the very last person to get off of the plane. I only had an hour in Atlanta, and I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to get to my connecting flight in time. I had to go all the way across the airport, but given that they had a nifty train that makes about half-a-dozen stops throughout the airport, it wasn't bad. I got to my assigned gate with about half an hour to spare, and sat to give Han his second dose of the sedative. Just as I finished with that, they started calling for people to board. Perfect, right? Wrong. When I got up there, they informed me that they had changed the gate for my flight, and I had just under 20 minutes to get from gate E17 to gate E4. I hauled butt over there (it was the same concourse, at least, but it was a totally different hallway. and believe it or not, 9 and a half pounds of cat gets heavy!) and made it by the skin of my teeth. I was towards the back of the plane again, but this time I had an inside aisle seat. I had an empty seat to my left, and the aisle to my right. I was able to spread out into the empty seat, so I wasn't so crammed, but those silly seats go back only so far... I didn't even bother trying to sleep until after dinner (which was surprisingly good), and then I only got a few hours of broken sleep. I thought that we were never going to land...but then we did. I got through customs and baggage claim pretty quickly, then had to wait about 5 minutes for the guy (I'm not sure exactly what his role/job title is) to read over the papers on Han and I was free to go. Bran was right there waiting for me, so we loaded up in the car and we were off. :)
At this point, I've been here for a little over 24 hours, and I absolutely love it. Everything is absolutely gorgeous! Fall is in full swing over here, and the trees are just beautiful. It's a wee bit chilly, but more brisk than cold. It's wet today, though, and I think that the temp is going to drop (if it hasn't started already). I'm still jet-lagging (Bran will NOT let me take a nap) so we're doing some low-key errand-running/exploring. We rented a car yesterday, and today I think we might go looking for one of our own. yay! We met a pair of interesting gentlemen at the hotel bar last night (we had to get out of the room so I wouldn't fall asleep too early) and they've pretty much got me convinced that a BMW would be a smarter purchase than a Volkswagon. {The first, Jim, is an American civilian working for the Army at Patch, one of the bases here. Pete is a Brit working for Mercedes Bens here in Stuttgart. They told us a lot about the area, about local foods and entertainments, and, obviously, about European cars.} So, that is our plan for the day. After that, who knows? But I'm sure that it'll be fun.
PS: Han did very well on the flight over here. We've now got him set up in our hotel room, and he is back to his usual self. *whew!*
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