Revisting 2015

In 2015 my husband became unwell, prompting him to retire early for a period of time in order to make memories as a family. We took our children out of school for 7 weeks and travelled through Europe exploring the world and making priceless memories with our two youngest daughters. My husband is doing okay now and we don’t regret for a moment the financial sacrifice we made to do this – money can be replaced but memories and time together cannot. This post is one written in 2015 capturing that adventure and has been posted unchanged and unamended.

I’m interrupting the broadcast that is my overview of our European vacation for an awesomely epic announcement! (Okay it isn’t so much an announcement, but something rare for a family that doesn’t have a money tree in their front – or back – yard, so I just had to document and write about it).

Best intentions. Yes we all have the best of intentions when we are preparing for something big. Like preparing for a long haul flight in economy. Of course like everyone else hubby and I had the best of intentions in preparing for our two part, long haul flight home to Australia. Our intention was to have an nice early-ish night giving us a good sleep for the first time on our trip, and head out after an early breakfast to do some shopping before heading to board our plane. I know I know – at least our intention was good right? So instead we did a late night Greek theatre show, a convo with the director after at her request, late night to bed, dragged ourselves out of bed for breakfast before going for a walk to pick up a new top and some *ahem* chocolate before going to the airport.

To say that we were all tired was an understatement…really, I’m surprised the airport security didn’t mistake our entry to the airport with the Zombie Apocalypse. So we were keen as to get on the plane and just get the whole flying thing over and done with very quickly so we could enjoy our four nights in to attend IGNITE Tour, and get rested after our six week holiday in Europe. So we lined up with everyone else to check in for our flight when the check in lady asks us if we want to upgrade to business class for a quite reasonable amount of money. We did consider it may have been way too expensive for us and seeing that we were thinking of saying no they offered one of the ticket upgrades for free, however it was still beyond what we were prepared to pay, another hostess walked up and offered to give us two for free. A little ‘eeek’ are we really going to pay that much to fly business class later and both hubby and I said yes! We have very little occasion to fly business class especially with two children on hand with us – its normally quite expensive for just one person let alone a family. But hell yeah…we were all trying very hard to stop ourselves from squealing with delight.

Firstly…executive lounge – thank you very much! Yummm…lovely little snacky lunch and a lovely drink and a relax before boarding our flight. Bypass the line to board? Why yes please. I must say that I needed to give myself a bit of a mental bitch slap for having that thought of “sucked in!!!” when the economy passengers began walking past looking longingly at our spacious accommodations – after all, we would have to be those economy people once again so remember to be grateful gosh darn it!

Secondly…the plane. So we boarded our plane and the set up is amazing. For example it appears that my seat has multiple functions. It is a chair, a recliner, A BED!, A MASSAGER!!, A CUBICLE!!! (Can you tell I have never flown Business Class). My little cubicle had storage area for my bag, a foot rest, a spacious table, a tv, a little area for bits, bottled water waiting for us, A DOONA! When I needed to visit the little girls room I found it to be only for Business Class, way more spacious, and complete with aromatherapy spritz, moisturiser, and eternally immaculate in cleanliness. 

We also had coloured mood lighting throughout the trip…wow! Talk about spoilt. It was a little odd being frequently called ma’am and constantly being offered alcohol (yeah right like I’m going to experience this under a haze of booze….nah!). But I soaked it up when brought our A la carte menu with the most amazing food on it – and yes they suggested a different type of wine with each course lol…nah!

So all in all we really enjoyed the high life even if it was only for five hours, and I really loved that I could let my kids experience it too – and they really appreciated it for sure. So now we are to disembark and head to our FIFTEEN. HOUR. ECONOMY. FLIGHT. TO. AUSTRALIA. ICK!

See you on the other side