Karibu Kenya

Our route to Zanzibar was sorta indirect. After all, I couldn’t pass up the chance to pitia nyumbani (pass through home) on our way to and from, especially given that airfare direct from Seattle to Zanzibar was (at its cheapest) three times more than that from Seattle to Nairobi…even with separate Nairobi to Zanzibar tickets thrown in AND a little change left over. So what that it would take us more than 30 hours on two different airlines (one of them being among my least favorite – but which aren’t these days?!?) to get there, complete with a 13 hour layover in Newark. I know; sounds like TONS of fun on not much sleep, but we were excited and carefree - emphasis on FREE [from books] to do whatever we wanted. And so began our adventure!

A relatively brief and somewhat sleepless Seattle-Newark red-eye flight later, we were wondering how in the world we were going to stay awake for 12 hours. Hmm…maybe we should have paid the extra $$$ for the KLM option (Seattle-Amsterdam-Nairobi) with a “just long-enough but not too-long layover,” and the option for a glorious, albeit pricey, 30-minute shower at Schiphol. Oh well, exhausted or not, a visit to the Big Apple (we were DEFINITELY NOT spending our entire layover in Newark) wasn’t a bad alternative.

The day went something like this: bleary-eyed breakfast at Newark airport with birds flying around inside the terminal; plugged my phone (a.k.a. my heart) into an outlet somewhere in the terminal – by a breakfast café; bought train tickets into the city; went through the turnstile to wait for train; reached into my purse for my phone and had major “OH CRAP!” moment as I remembered where it was; ran back through turnstile (there go our round-trip train fares into the cityL) and back to the terminal, where my baby was quietly waiting (WHEW!!!) and fully charged – ready for NYC. Despite being super tired, we walked a ton and did some sight-seeing: Madison Square Garden, Rockefeller Plaza (coffee at Dean & Deluca), and Central Park, although, sadly, ran out of time before we could make it to the Ground Zero memorial.

Our next leg (Newark-Zurich) was uneventful, and blissfully sleep-filled. We were jolted awake by a crazy 45-minute dash through the airport to make our connection (including having to go through security again, as is the norm in Europe)…aaaanndd…back to sleepJ The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We took a taxi home and, despite it being Friday, Nairobi traffic did not quite live up to its [ugly] potential. My Mummy, as well as adorable niece and nephew were waiting outside to greet Aunties Olive and Stephanie. Ahhh…I will NEVER get tired of those hugs!!!

We spent the next 10 days in Nairobi being as lazy as we possibly could, reacquainting ourselves with that precious thing called sleep. I rediscovered TV and voila...the French Open was on! (Poor kids had trouble getting the remote from me after that.) We did a little shopping and sight-seeing; my mum tried her best to “fatten” Stephanie up (all the while telling me I should go running with her…ha!), Steph kissed a giraffe (I’ll let her fill in the blanks…), and all too soon, it was time to say goodbye L At least this time I’d be on the same continent, just a short plane ride away, and back in a couple of months…although I agreed with my niece’s tear-filled statement that, “Two months was TOOOOOOO long!” to wait to see them again :-/