Transit

Mombasa is very far. The first leg of our flight was 10 hours to Amsterdam. We were very much awake and excited for our travels. This alertness resulted in watching 4 movies in a row and about 5 plane food meals, ugh. We watched Mr. poppers penguins(loved it), Moneyball, Friends with Benifits, Harry Potter8.2(tommy skipped HP for planet of the apes and Bad Teacher). We ate snacks like pretzels, pasta with mystery green sauce, salad, bread with cheese, butter, crackers, a brownie, a turkey and cheese sandwich, Milano cookies, a veggie hot pocket type thing, banana and juice. The flight took us over northern Canada to Greenland and back down to Amsterdam. It was beautiful out the window, miles and miles of frozen land, very few lights below. There was some gnarly turbulence over what I think was greenland but it was brief, thank goodness! We land in Amsterdam without a hitch. Getting off the plane was freezing! It's defiantly cold in Amsterdam right now!! We exchanged some money in the airport to have some Kenyan shillings for our arrival in Nairobi and picked up a few euro just in case. 150e exchanged for 14,000 Ksh. The airport was very modern, clean. Instead of doing security to get to the gates there, every gate has its own security. So you go through the metal detector and things and come out to the jetway onto the plane. We made it to our gate and saw the line through security was long so we went and got a coffee instead. Two coffees at the airport was $9! So not right. But the coffee was good. We made it back into line, cleared security then had to be in line on the jetway, where it was probably about 10 degrees out. We had to watch for ice. Brrrrrrr!! Made me even more ready for Kenya weather! The flight to Nairobi was 8 hours. I was pretty tired, started to watch Jane Eyre thinking it would put metro sleep and boy wasi right! I slept for about 3 hours then woke up to watch Drive, and crazy stupid love, nothing like an in flight Ryan gosling marathon! I'm sure I missed some food while snoozing but somehow I still managed to eat another pasta thing with a whipped cream strawberry crumble type dessert, and avoided a strange potato salad with lettuce and shrimp on top, crackers and bread, cheese, ice cream, pizza, apples, pasta salad and some yummy chocolates! The airline was Dutch so I'm guessing that's why some of the food was a little strange. The flight was smooth, got to see the alps and as soon as we got over Africa, a lot of desert! We landed in Nairobi about 8p. Got off the plane onto the 90 degree heat and walked across the tarmac to the terminal.The Nairobi airport is...rustic. It could use some repairs to the walkway as it had craters of missing cement(not marked) throughout and was in need of a facelift. I bought a phone that cost about $30 with some minutes to use while we are away. To call the US costs only 3Ksh(3cents) a minute and texts are 1 shilling. A pretty good deal. We had to pass customs and the visa counter which was a breeze. We got our visas before we left so we didn't have to stand in the longest line. We picked up our bags, customs didn't mind all the American snacks I brought and we crossed the road to the domestic terminal(I use the term terminal loosely, it was just a separate building, nothing like a US terminal, with a small cafe inside and seats to wait for the plane). We were pretty beat. We sat at the cafe and shared a huge Guiness while watching the grainy tv with local news. Around 10 they boarded our sparsely filled plane which we walked across the Tarmac to. The flight was a quick 2 hours and we were early into Mombasa. Of all the terrible airplane food we ate, the best food was on this short flight, a little bag of cashews and macadamia nuts...so so delish! We landed in Mombasa, crossed another tarmac, collected our luggage and found Frank, our taxi driver sent by Jen holding a little sign with our names scribbled on it. We followed him to his car and he went to pop the trunk opening the passenger door he flipped the lever and I thought, oh that's cool you have a trunk opener on the passenger side...um, no. Somehow in all the axing and things I did it never occured to me cars are opposite American style. It still throws me off. No good when crossing the street, Tommy almost didn't make one crossing! Also they drive FUCKING CRAZY here!!!! Fast,swerving around each other crazy. The ride to jens from the airport was a good welcome to mombasa crazy driving town!it drove through the port with huge old old trucks, areas of burning things like tires and trash.(side note... They are playing Wilco in the cafe right now)We eventually pulled up on front of jens gate, security let us in and we were there!! We chatted briefly and went to bed, we were very tired and happy to be somewhere comfy!!