I’ll try to keep this brief but wanted to include how we actual travel from country to country– we learned a lot already and wanted to provide some quick insights into what a travel day looks like.
3:30 AM Super early wake up time. I was jazzed- get me somewhere warm.
3:30 – 4:30 AM Cook breakfast, wash up, take down and pack up the tent, roll up the sleeping bags, look forward to not camping for a stretch.
4:45 AM Return camping equipment
4:45- 5:15 AM Travel to car return
5:15- 5:45 AM Wait for shuttle to the airport
6:00 – 6:30 AM Go through security and customs in Reykjavik
6:30 – 9:00 AM Make it to the gate, blog, wait to board
9:50 AM – 2:20 PM Flight from Iceland to London-Luton
2:20 – 4:00 PM Go through security and customs in London
4:00 – 4:30 PM Eat in the London airport
5:20 PM Board for Budapest
5:45- 9:00 PM Flight to Budapest
9:00 – 9:20 PM Customs in Budapest
9:30 – 9:50 PM Uber to AirBNB
It was a long day.
A few lessons we learned:
- When you travel with a backpack, you have to travel as light as possible. This probably seems super obvious, but for us, it was having one extra set of a few toiletries (shampoo, soap, etc.) that got us in London. We each had one gallon sized Ziploc with our 3 ounce liquids which the less-than-friendly security women had us consolidate into two quart-sized bags a piece– which required us to throw out some toiletries in line. When we got to Budapest, we discovered that soap is cheaper here than it is in America so we should have just planned to buy it here anyway.
- Avoid families in security lines. They are not the fastest. And they argue.
- Grab a custom form and keep it moving. The customs line in London was crazy long. Before queuing up, as the British would say, we stopped to fill out our entry form, and then my kind-hearted husband loaned one of my good pens to another traveller to fill out his form. By the time he finished using it and we got in line, people we had previously been behind were twenty people in front of us. Also, we were carrying 20lb packs on our back. Next time, we know to fill out the forms while we wait.
- Use the turtle feature of our backpack! Our backpacks have this fantastic feature where the straps in the back zip up into the bag itself. There’s no way we should have both been able to carry on our bags on the cheap airline we were flying, but this turtle trick totally got us through undetected. Not having to wait at baggage claim when we got to Budapest was a godsend.
When we made it to our AirBNB, we could have kissed the ground! Instead, we showered (GLORIOUS), watched an episode of Handmaid’s Tale, and slept like babies in honest-to-goodness actual beds.
We love Budapest! Excited to share about this wonderful city soon!