Rachael On The Geaux

We started off our trip going from MSY to Athens. Originally we were supposed to leave at noon for DC, but the night before our flight was canceled. Luckily, Cody saw and got us rebooked onto a flight to Newark at 7 am. He woke me up at 4 and we started our journey down to New Orleans.

Since our flight was changed we ended up having a 6-hour layover in Newark. We went into the United Club room which I recommend doing if you have a long layover. The room had access to food, drinks, clean restrooms, and even showers if you wanted! We lucked out and found a couch to crash on.

When it was finally time to board we headed to our gate, just to be met with a thunderstorm delay. After an hour, we stepped onto our plane with United and got comfortable. Unfortunately, we sat on the ground for almost 2 hours waiting for more storms to stop. Once we finally took off we turned on our TV screens and watched Eternals. The nice part about these screens is you have the option to turn them off and a sign could say “wake me for meals” that way you can sleep and still get all the snacks, food, and drinks. 

I wish we would have brought some of our own snacks or food onto the plane because I’m not the biggest fan of airplane food. We had chicken with quinoa and tomato sauce, salad with balsamic vinaigrette, a roll, and lemon sorbet for dinner. Later on, they served us breakfast as well. It was strawberry Greek yogurt with a biscotti. 

We landed the next day in Greece since they are 8 hours ahead. Once we got through customs and got our bags we noticed our transfer wasn’t there. Since our flight had been delayed and canceled multiple times they didn’t show up for the new time. There was also no way to contact them even when filling out a request form on their website. So we don’t recommend using the company MyTransfers. After the bad experience with them we canceled our future bookings with them and still haven’t received our money back. We reached out to our hotel and they set up a ride for us. If you didn’t want to set up a ride there are a lot of taxis waiting outside the airport that are very easy to grab. 

Coming back from Greece we had a similar experience.

For our trip back we were going to fly United…but at 3am the flight was canceled. They started rebooking us and then at 6am our flight was canceled completely. After being on the phone for over 2 hours we were finally rebooked on a Lufthansa flight from Athens to Munich, Germany to San Francisco finally to New Orleans. We pushed back our transfer and went across the street to grab some breakfast and a coffee.

Once we got to the airport we check our luggage, and they weighed our carry on again. We walked through some of the duty free shops and picked up some last minute gifts (I highly recommend the spoon sweets). If you do purchase anything at the duty free shops, make sure they tape the bags closed and don’t open it until you get home. When you get back into the states they make you go through security again, so if you buy liquids the only way they can make it through in your carry-on is in the closed bag.

After our fist flight we had to go through passport control in Munich, so if you have a connecting flight make sure you have enough time. Since we were rebooked onto this flight we weren’t guaranteed seats next to each other. We lucked out that the 2 people that were supposed to sit next to us didn’t show up so we got to sit together.

On the way back we watched Encanto, Sing 2, Venom and Hustle. All were great! They served us pasta with red sauce and cheese, a salad, roll, and some kind of cake. It was a lot better than the food going to Greece.

Our layover in San Francisco we picked up dinner and waited until our flight was ready at 11:30pm. And then we made it back to New Orleans at 6 am the next day.

I recommend for these long flights bringing

• Snacks
• Your own meal in case you get hungry or don’t like the one they provide
• Movies downloaded on your phone or iPad for extra entertainment on flights or layovers
• Sleep mask– on our long flight coming back it never got dark outside so these made it easier to sleep
• Water – you’re going to want more than what they give when they pass by on the drink cart
• Noise canceling headphones
• Toothbrush and toothpaste
• Neck pillow