Our Uber driver Herby dropped us off at the Newark Delta Departure Terminal at about 5:30 AM. The long ride made us stiff, and it was hard to get moving again. We had already done a lot of walking this morning, and apparently, we still had more to do here in Newark. We headed inside to the TSA Precheck, Stephanie had already done our online check-in while we were on the way here. The initial entry was by automated machines, reading boarding passes and facial images. Then we headed to security. We did not have to take off a lot, but we had to put everything I big containers for the X-ray.
Today, it was my bag that got flagged for additional inspection, only because I have a lot of camera gear, so they wanted to do a very brief inspection inside my camera bag. We did not have any checked luggage of course, it is sitting somewhere at JFK.
We headed out to the terminal and found something to eat for breakfast. We never had any dinner, we only split a sandwich in Atlanta waiting on our plane, but even that was early on, we were supposed to get dinner on the flight from JFK to Iceland, so we did not want to eat too much. Oh, and I forgot, I got a Biscotti biscuit cookie and Stephanie got two small bags of bugles on the flight last night, or was that this morning really.
We found a place serving bagels, so we both got plain bagels, mine with egg, cheese, and ham, hers with egg, cheese, and sausage. One small coffee and one bottled water and we were quickly out $43.00. It was expensive, but the bagels were fresh and made fresh with all of the other items, not prepackaged and sitting. they were quite good and really hit the spot.
We found an area with empty chairs and sat there for a while, each using the restroom to brush our teeth and freshen up a little.
We charged our phones and sent an email to CampEasy with our new arrival information.
After that, it was just waiting around for our next flight at 12:32 PM this afternoon, just a measly 6-hour wait.
We walked to Gate A4 and found some mostly quiet seats at an Air Canada Gate. Stephanie napped while I tried to write the blog for yesterday and today before I was too tired to remember.
It is strange that we will spend more time in airports and flying today than yesterday, it just does not seem real, but we are thankful that hopefully, the impact will only be one day, and we did have an extra day built into the schedule, but this was not the way we envisioned using it. I did not mention that we had decided to travel with masks, just to try and protect ourselves as much as possible. It is ironic that we are spending so much more time in the airport and airplanes, we had thought these would be relatively short flights with short exposure.
We are getting closer to the time to board our flight to Minneapolis, so this will be all for a while.
We boarded the EWR to MSP flight and our seats were all the way in the back, at least on the side of the lane with 2 seats per row, the other side had 3 seats per row. There were two flight attendants in the rear of the plane and we had a funny discussion with them about our adventures to date. The one flight attendant did confirm that our suitcases were almost certainly going to Reykjavik on the same flight as last night, Delta Ft. 246, but would go tonight. That made us feel better. In fact, Stephanie could see a status update on our bags in the Delta App under “Track My Bags”, but it was not very descriptive, just that there was something happening with them.
The flight was peaceful, but really loud in the rear of the plane. This was a Boing 717 and the engines are mounted on the side of the plane at the rear, obviously right next to our seats. In fact, we did not even have a window, just a blank wall. We both had to use our noise-canceling Beats Ear Buds, and it was still pretty loud.
We both apparently snoozed some on the flight, I know I was asleep until I heard the sound of a soda can opening as they were serving drinks on the flight. Stephanie was able to get a free Jim Beam with Ginger Ale, and we shared it. I guess one of the flight attendants we talked to felt sorry for us and pitched in a spirit-lifting beverage on the house.
The flight was relatively smooth, but a little bumpy at times, but nothing bad. We mostly tried to rest, possibly dozing off a few times, but not real or sustained sleep. The flight was just short of three hours from gate to gate, and it was sunny when we arrived in Minneapolis. We deplaned and headed into the terminal. At first, it was not impressive, we were in a section being renovated. However, the central terminal hub looked newer and had quite a few upscale stores. Stephanie visited one while I rested. Most of the walk to the central hub was uphill for some reason from our gate.
We headed out to our gate for the flight to Reykjavik, we are leaving out of the F Terminal. One of the flight attendants we had talked to on the last flight told us about a Mexican Restaurant in the F Terminal, and we found it right across from our gate. We got a table and split an order of steak nachos and we each had one, then two Dos Equis Amber beers on the bottle. The nachos were good, and the beers were cold. It was enjoyable as a late lunch.
Our overall layover is about 5 hours before we depart for Reykjavik, so after the snack, we sat out at the gate and I worked on this blog post. I also worked on pulling together some of the information we will need to file a delay claim with our travel insurance for our delay at JFK. I had to do a Google Search to help me to determine if we had a Travel Delay or a Travel Interruption, I just wanted to make sure since it requires a lot of documentation. I downloaded a paper claim form so I could have all of the requirements listed in a single place. Our plan is to put together all of the documentation they require and submit the claim online at their website. It seems a little confusing, so I will probably err on the side of over-documentation versus having it denied for lack of documentation.
I was able to print to PDF most everything we needed and put it into a folder on the computer. We will try to upload it into a claim in the next several days, but while I had the chance while waiting on our flight this evening, it was easy to use the free wi-fi in the airport.
We are both tired and hope to get some sleep on this overnight flight. It is only about an hour longer than the posted timeframe of the original JFK flight we had, possibly since we are farther north. It still seems odd since our flight from New York to Minneapolis was almost three hours long.
Our flights today were much more timely, but not totally without issue. Before we could board our flight to Reykjavik, they were making an announcement at the gate that they needed volunteers to take the flight tomorrow night instead. They were offering a gift card and a free night at a hotel, as well as meal vouchers. They started out offering an $800 gift card as well as the hotel and meals but got no takers. Then they announced that they needed no less than 8-10 people to “volunteer” to move to tomorrow night’s flight, they were that much oversold. I was beginning to worry a bit because I knew we had just gotten our tickets this morning, and we had no idea what the criteria was for eliminating extra people if they did not get enough volunteers. This was beginning to cut into the boarding time, but until they got the number of people reduced, they would not board.
They started to up the gift card offer, and at $1200 per person they got a few volunteers, but not enough. They were still working but decided to go ahead with boarding. We knew there were some people with basic economy tickets and they do not get seats assigned until boarding. Maybe they were the pool to choose from if they still needed to reduce numbers.
We were in Zone 5 and until we scanned our boarding passes and actually were cleared to board, I was a little nervous we would not make the cut. Stephanie had heard they were up to $1700 per person in a gift card by the time we were boarding. I was too nervous to have heard it.
We boarded and finally felt safe that we were not going to get cut.
We had been issued exit row seats at the window and middle of the three-seat row, just past the wing and although they were right past the bathroom, there was a bulkhead and we had a lot of extra legroom. There was a jump seat for a flight attendant that folded down for takeoff and landing, but it was nice that we could leave our seats without interrupting the aisle passenger.
During the preparation for takeoff, we had a nice discussion with the flight attendant, explaining all we had been through for the past two days.
The flight was uneventful, and about an hour or so into the flight, we were served a meal, well it was really either a chicken salad sandwich, which I had, or a fruit and cheese tray which Stephanie had. They were not bad, but it was not really a meal, more like a snack in our opinion, but it hit the spot and we were still a little full from our Mexican lunch.
We had two classes of Cabernet wine and after that, we were really tired and actually got a decent amount of sleep for such a short flight, just a little over 6 hours in duration. It was smooth, at least what we were awake for.
The next thing I remember, Stephanie was waking me up because they were serving morning beverages. I had a coffee and Stephanie had her usual Diet Coke, and we were given Biscoff cookies, wow, what a breakfast.
It was sunny outside, but there was a layer of clouds over the ocean below.
It was smooth until we had to go through the layer of clouds, but overall, not bad. We landed on time and then got off the plane in a jetway that led downstairs to waiting buses that took us to the terminal, which was a little bit of a time waster.
We both needed a restroom break and they had very interesting restrooms in the terminal. The stalls in both restrooms were full ceiling-to-floor rooms with a toilet and sink inside. They were the most private restroom stalls I had ever seen.
After our retroom break, we headed to the immigration area, and headed up directly to a waiting immigration officer. Stephanie and I were side by side but with different officers. It was quick and easy, a scan of our passports, and a stamp and we were through, I wish it was that easy in the USA.
This is all for this post, we will continue today in the next post.
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