Maybe this post would be better if titled one thousand eighteen days? It has been that long since I last travelled by plane. Then it was a hop skip and a couple of jumps from Cincinnati to Atlanta to Paris and finally arriving in Dubai. Then it was a flight by myself; today, it was all five of us travelling from Dubai to Barcelona and then on to Mexico City.
Due to the impact of COVID on the world and how so many people are simply no longer following the rules, I was pretty worried about these long flights. I was equally worried as our first flight did not leave Dubai until 3 am. Having a ten-year-old and five-year-old twins, well, this is not an ideal time to start any journey. I must admit I was quite surprised to find that at no point in our journey were we asked to show any documentation as to our vaccination status or indeed if we were positive for Covid via the Alhosen App used in Dubai. We are vaccinated and boosted and had all digital paperwork at the ready for the trip. To be honest, the whole document requirements required for this was a stressor for me and something that I simply should not have worried about as it did not come-up at all during our travels. I know the world is trying to find it’s way back to normal (is that possible?) but the lack of checking of our documents was quite the shock, especially as positive Covid numbers are on the increase in the UAE. Maybe people have given up? Maybe people have gotten lazy in regard to mask-wearing and social distancing? Maybe people just want their lives back?
Thankfully, for the most part, the boys slept on the seven-hour flight from Dubai to Barcelona, and 99% of the passengers were masked for the flight. After a quick hour where we deplaned while they swapped out crew and scrubbed the plane clean, we were off for our eleven-hour flight from Barcelona to Mexico City. While it has been so long since any of us travelled this far by plane, the boys did a fantastic job yet again to get through eleven hours of sitting still while travelling at hundreds of miles an hour, thirty-five thousand feet in the air.
And so, here we are in Mexico City for the summer, currently suffering from Jet Flag*.
*noun: jet flag
the feeling of tiredness and confusion that toddlers and grown-ups alike experience after making ridiculously long trips by plane to a place where the time is different from the place they left. This unique phrase was invented by a very confused 4-year old Mateo after one too many time zone changes.