Flying from the U.S. to Europe

Sometime during the second half of the flight (which typically takes place in the middle of the night European time), I begin to ask myself whether the travel was worth whatever we might benefit from it.

Once we've arrived and I've had a shower and (this is important) a 4-hour nap, I revise my dubious opinion and realize it was worth the temporary discomfort. This is a fairly common pattern for me.

On our most recent such flight, as we were leaving the airspace over Washington, D.C. and heading out over the Atlantic Ocean, the air traffic controllers reported to our pilot (as broadcast on channel nine of our headsets) that there were a bunch of blue and white ballooons floating around up near us. The pilot replied, "Happy Birthday!"

Later on I heard the air traffic control mention "a bunch of jumpers" - wow, busy sky up there. I never thought about commercial aircraft having to circumnavigate parachutists. That's crazy. Imagine you're there having a good time skydiving, and along comes a 747 headed straight for you?

Europe has generally better yogurt selections than the U.S., in our opinion. The newest offering we've found: Brazil Nut Yogurt. We've known about Hazelnut Yogurt forever, but Brazil Nut is a new one on us. It's pretty good. If you think this doesn't belong in this post, you're probably right. But we discovered this new kind of yogurt the day we took such a flight as mentioned in the title, so I'm letting it slide.