Off to Europe - Senior Travel Adventures with Karen (kk)

You all know Karen ‘kk’ Taylor. Her Mind + Body classes calm and inspire us. For one month, kk has been touring Europe with her friend Dian, and we get to follow along. As kk says, ‘I am ready to have fun.’ This senior travel adventure is just that; we can share her experiences and keep our minds open and active. Follow kk’s warrior poses as we ‘get in our steps’ and lean into the experience. Getting our steps in is easy when the inspiring sights are just ahead.

I will post Dian’s commentary and kk’s photos as they arrive. Come back often to check in with her.

This is the Prologue to Day 1 of kk's European Adventure

Villages Instructor Karen 'kk' Taylor and Dian Turner, Traveling Partner

Written by Dian Turner, my travel partner, who you will see in some of the pictures. 

The last 24 hours have been challenging but hilarious. Imagine, if you can two old ladies running through airports practicing our breathing. After all, this is kk's Adventure.

Plans for this trip were made in early 2020. Then Covid hit. Planned for 6 months later, but Covid won again. Planned for a year later, and we got the news that Tommie (who is Tommie) had pancreatic cancer. So last fall, we decided to once again book the same trip for April 2024 and got great flights, which is hard to do with points nowadays. When we realized the eclipse was April 8, kk wanted to stay for this monumental occurrence, so guess what? We changed it AGAIN for April 9. 

Realizing we might get in "eclipse" traffic getting to the Austin airport, we decided to get a room at the airport Hyatt after the eclipse, which would guarantee we made our flight. Travis (who is Travis) was kind enough to take us to the airport and keep my car for the 26 days we planned to be gone. 

Early to rise and shuttle over, we ended up sitting at the airport for about 4 hours - 2 delays posted, then the Dallas flight was cancelled altogether with no options to make our connecting direct flight to Rome. American said we could go home and come back Thursday!!! Not sure who they thought they were dealing with, but obviously didn't know us. We were going to Europe come hell or high water (Yelp it was the rain that was the problem).

Using our handy app, we figured if we could get to Dallas, we could get on a flight that day. Sure enough, Iberia had a flight to Madrid, and we could connect to Rome. We asked for our luggage back and called Travis to return to the airport and get us. kk's bag came almost immediately, but an hour later we finally learned that the desk lady had not requested mine, just Kk's. Finally, mine arrived. We dropped Travis back home and proceeded to drive to Dallas. My brother, DJ, drove us to the airport and kept my car. 

We made a 9:40 pm flight, but when we arrived in Madrid, we had a very short layover. Walking what seemed like miles and having to go through passport and security checks (oh, yes, we both neglected to remove our water bottles so that sent us to have our bags searched). After changing terminals and frantically searching for the gate, we realized the gate was the last in the terminal. I can't say we "ran," but at the highest rate of speed two elderly ladies can muster, we headed down the terminal. The little man at the gate saw us huffing and puffing and waved for us to come on. They held the plane and slammed the door as we entered. I guess our luck finally changed. Off we go to Rome! And guess what, we only lost less than a day of our trip.