As a former airline pilot I’m no stranger to spending hours at a time sitting on a filthy couch in a windowless airport basement, waiting for a delayed airplane to arrive. Christine and I have always put up with many long layovers in airports around the world together but when I began taking our girls wherever they wished on their 10th birthday I started using airline lounges.
Ava and I had relaxing showers in Tokyo on on the way to Beijing and I realized it was all worth it.
We don’t directly pay for lounge visits as they come with bonuses when you use the right credit card. The card we’re intentionally using on this trips gives us free unlimited access to one of the largest lounge networks in the world but we wouldn’t belong to the network if we didn’t travel so often. Brie and I took a red eye to New York so we could spend the day in the city then another red eye that night to Brussels before going on to Paris. We relaxed in a JFK lounge after many miles walking NYC then spent another hour or so in the Brussels lounge before catching a train to Paris.
On our first flight to kick off this year of travel we arrived in Munich, Germany after 9 hours of flying. Too tired to visit the city on our five hour layover we took refuge in the Atlantic Club where I enjoyed a shower and we let the kids eat to their heart’s content while playing games with each other. I fought the urge to have more than one beer and also avoided sampling all of the free alcohol. After a coffee we made our way to our final flight to Sibiu, Romania.
Long layovers are no longer something we avoid as long as there is a lounge nearby. We’re traveling to get to the next place we’re going to live instead of traveling for vacation so the desire to get somewhere as fast as possible isn’t really there. On to the next lounge.
Author: Justin
Co-character in this adventure.