So…the Lothrops are off to India for 5 months! Specifically Hyderabad, which is now in the
state of Telangana (the capital, in fact!).
When we were there in 2010 the state was Andhra Pradesh. With the split, as of June 2, 2014, Telangana
and Andhra Pradesh now go back to states with more historical
significance.
Now that I’ve lost the casual reader with that boring
stuff, I’ll try to lose the rest of you.
We started our trip on October 30, 2014 by catching an
Uber in Chicago to O’Hare. Believe it or
not…our Uber driver was originally from Hyderabad, and still has a lot of
family there. Crazy. Our flight out of Chicago was at around 10:00
PM, so we decided to torture ourselves and everyone else by making Annabelle
(our three year-old…henceforth referred to as “AB”) stay awake as long as
possible.
Mission accomplished (not in the George W. Bush
sense). We boarded the plan and AB was
out cold within 10 minutes. A champagne
toast between Amanda and me was in order.
We slept for a lot of the trip, along with our small comatose companion,
but with about 30 minutes to go on the flight AB woke up. Luckily she downed some yogurt for breakfast
and we landed at London Heathrow without a hitch.
It’s about noon on Halloween… There were a lot of people dressed up like
Dick Van Dyke’s character in Mary Poppins or with really gross looking fake
teeth. Weird. First leg down. One more to go…with a fully rested
“threenager” on the prowl.
The flight from London to Hyderabad started with an
upgrade to First Class! Bad news is that
those seats are designed to be VERY independent and face in different
directions even in the same row. Ideal
for most travelers, but not when we needed to entertain AB for over 8
hours. The flight attendants were great,
and so was the movie selection. Aside
from using Amanda as a human pillow for a few hours, Annabelle was able to stay
entertained fairly independently and was actually pretty darn pleasant considering
the circumstances. Must be the result of
good parenting. Or bribing with mints
and chocolate. Yeah…mostly the latter.
Well, we’re now in India!
We completely missed Halloween…but have now fear, we packed two of AB’s
princess outfits to break out in case of an emergency Halloween celebration.
Luckily Amanda and I did all of this 4 years ago, so we sort of know what’s going on at the
airport. We have our Customs form filled
out perfectly and we’re ready to answer any ques…….. Oh. We
just walk through Customs without anyone checking anything? Cool.
Great start.
It’s 5:00 AM and we’re now on our way to the
hotel. The Westin has picked us up, we
have loaded in AB’s carseat, and we’re off!
And we’re wide-awake. And singing
at the top of our lungs in the car. Hope
you’re ready for Annabelle Lothrop, Hyderabad!
