Monday and Tuesday, December 25-26, 2017

The good thing about traveling on Christmas Day is that there are few cars on I94, making for a calm drive to the airport. The airport wasn’t busy either. We left the house at 9am, with plenty of time to get to our 3pm flight. It’s winter in Minnesota, and we never know if there will be an accident due to snow or ice, so we allow plenty of time. Today, though, it was clear – and the temperature was above 0, a balmy 1 degree. Can you understand why we are leaving?

After an 8 hour flight, we landed in Amsterdam, at 5am their time. Again, there were few people in the airport when we arrived. By the time we boarded our connecting flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, it had gotten quite busy.

Ten more hours in the air, we landed in Johannesburg at 10pm local time. With all of this flying, I actually watched five movies, but I don’t remember much about most of them.

The time difference is 8 hours – GMT +2. We’ll have quite an adjustment to make. We stayed at the Hilton Sandton.There wasn’t much time to enjoy our time at the hotel, which was beautifully decorated for Christmas.