Pandemic Flight

Have you ever wanted to know what it is like to do an international move, with a baby, during a pandemic?

We didn't either, but we found out anyway!

With all of our belongings either in transit via crate or packed into our three big bags, Hannah, Lucia and I caught two flights from Barcelona in a vastly different travel landscape than the one we had experienced on our November trip back to America. Lucia was different too. This time around, Lucia was much more active, much more interested in touching things, and much less sleepy than she had been at four months.

Barcelona Airport, Heathrow in London and JFK in New York were all mostly empty. Stores were closed, food options were extremely limited and only a fraction of their previous air traffic was running through these usually very busy airports.

Anti-COVID-19 measures were inconsistent and inconsistently enforced. Unfortunately, on our second flight from Heathrow to JFK, the family in front of us all took off their masks for the duration of the eight-hour flight, the father periodically coughing and the teenage son picking his nose, flicking his boogers under his seat, frequently rubbing his eyes and unconsciously doing everything he possibly could to gross Hannah out. Most of the passengers were pretty responsible about mask use, but unfortunately the flight attendants weren't.

We finally convinced Lucia to sleep for the last two hours of the flight and we landed at 6pm, although it felt like midnight for her.

We'll be spending the month of July at Hannah's parents' house, the first two weeks in DHS-mandated quarantine, which we'll take seriously given that there's a non-zero chance that we could have caught COVID-19 on the trip. We want to do everything we possibly can to prevent ourselves from passing anything on to Hannah folks, so for the next 14 days we'll be settled into their basement apartment and they'll have to wait a bit longer to play with their grandchild.