23 hours of travel
23 hours – that’s how long we were on the move until we could lay our heads down for a full nights sleep. All in all, everyone did great!
After leaving Louisville, we got to spend the night with my Uncle Joe, Aunt Kathy and my cousin Andrea who was visiting them from LA. It was a perfect evening catching up with family we haven’t seen in over 2 years – thanks COVID.
My uncle and aunt have a gorgeous home in New Jersey and our kids loved every second of our stay there. They swam in the pool, which looks like a pond, explored the home, which has too many rooms to count, and listened to story after story about my uncle’s incredible life.
My uncle Joe was a Captain in the US Army at the age of 20. As a Green Beret, he fought in Vietnam, where he was wounded when one of his men stepped on a land mine. He almost lost an arm and a leg, but his men took over the field hospital and made sure the doctor was motivated to not take his limbs. He received the Bronze Medal with a V for Valor. Upon discharge he got into real estate and then convinced Merrill Lynch’s CT field office to hire him. He quickly advanced and ultimately became the Chairman & CEO of UBS PaineWebber. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed him to serve as the Chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. And that’s just a few of the highlights! Needless to say, the kids were mesmerized, especially Sophia.
Other highlights included my cousin Andrea teaching the kids one of our grandmother’s great parlor tricks.
After a great night of sleep, we left well rested, well fed, inspired and ready for the adventure ahead., which was great because it would be another 23 hours before any of us got a good night sleep.
In short hand: we drove from New Jersey to JFK Airport, met up with my parents who are traveling with us (more on that in future posts), flew from NY to Paris, navigated through Charles de Gaulle Airport at 1am our time, caught a flight to Porto, Portugal, were picked by our VRBO host company - Feel Porto (highly recommend!) - and dropped in the center of Porto to explore while they held our bags and got our apartment ready. After walking Porto for the day, we were finally able to check in to our apartment and rest up for a bit before heading out again to get groceries, cook dinner and finally call it a day/night/day.
