US Trip: Logistics
Planning a three+ week trip anywhere is difficult, but I found this trip back to the US to be particularly challenging. It is weird to plan a trip to a place where I used to live because all of the comforts of home that I previously took for granted weren’t there. Even though I logically knew I should look at this like any other trip, it was hard to get out of the mindset that certain things would be readily available. Things like healthcare, a steady cell phone plan, and a place to stay. Here’s how we tackled the logistics of the first family trip back.
Flights - We flew from Auckland to Houston on the direct flight from Air New Zealand. I’ve said this before, but I will happily take that fourteen hour flight over splitting the trip into two sections. The flight leaves in the evening, so we’re served dinner, get ready for bed, and the kids are able to get a halfway decent night’s sleep before they wake up, watch a movie, have breakfast, and land.
If you’re able, the SkyCouch is worth every. single. penny. The difference in the quality of sleep is amazing and makes the first day exponentially better. We booked one SkyCouch when we got our tickets initially, and we were able to get a second SkyCouch at a discounted rate the day of travel. This buy-at-the-airport tactic is a trick we’ve tried three times now. We’ve been successful two out of three attempts.
Jet Lag - The time difference between Texas and New Zealand is 19 hours right now. In reality, that’s only 5 and very doable. Personally, I think it is much easier to fly from New Zealand to Houston because the afternoon arrival time means it isn’t too long before it is time for bed. Also, with the time difference, the kids tend to sleep much later than usual (like 10 o’clock!) which is divine.
The tough part is the jet lag on the return to Auckland because now the kids want to wake up incredibly early in the morning. Plus, the arrival time in the pre-dawn hours means a morning nap is unavoidable, and that screws up the time adjustment. I’d highly recommend stocking up on some melatonin while in the US as it comes in very handy for those 1 am wake-ups and isn’t readily available in New Zealand.
Car Rental - since we sold our daily drivers before leaving for New Zealand, we needed to rent a car to haul two adults, two kids, and a ton of luggage for three weeks. All of the prices from the airport rental locations were expensive, so we chose to rent from an Avis that was located in a suburb of Houston. This cut the price of the rental in half, and near the end of our trip, we changed our drop off location to the Houston airport. Fortunately, there was no change in the rental fee to drop off the car in the same city.
Health Insurance - This was a big change for me. I’ve never had to look for short-term US health insurance, and I wasn’t about to travel for this long without it. I knew that I would be able to relax more if I wasn’t constantly patrolling the kids to calm down or not be as crazy on the playgrounds because they might fall and get hurt. We chose one month of membership with Sedera for US$500 for me and the kids. To be clear, Sedera is a health sharing plan, not insurance, and we were previously with them before moving. We chose the easy route, not the best route.
If I had done just a tiny amount of research, I would’ve found out that there are much cheaper options available. Southern Cross, for example, quoted me NZ$422 for travel and health insurance for the trip, which is, needless to say, A LOT cheaper. And with a $100 excess as opposed to the $500 option for Sedera. This would’ve been great because we ended up taking my daughter into an urgent care facility the day before leaving because she was complaining about her ears hurting. It seemed like a bad idea to put her on a long haul flight without getting that checked out, so we did a ton of research to find the least expensive doc-in-a-box. Thirty minutes, a dramatic ear-wax clean out, and US$202 later, we knew that she did not have an ear infection as we safe to fly.
Lodgings - I planned our itinerary so we were bouncing around about every three days. I hoped this would give us a chance to see family and friends and have a little bit of fun time to explore and play. Even though our kids aren’t growing up in the US, I want them to have a good understanding of what America has to offer so that they can make an educated decision on where they want to live and work as adults. My plan was to go Houston -> Austin (adults only! and leave the kids with my sister for “cousin camp” for a few days.) -> Houston -> Austin -> San Antonio -> Austin -> Abilene -> Austin -> Houston. Just looking at this makes me cringe a little.
The only way this worked (from a sanity perspective) was that we had some generous friends who were out of town and let us have the run of their house while we were visiting. We were able to use their house as a home base and only pack small travel bags each time we went off to another city. This was a godsend to have this type of central location. We didn’t have to pack up all of the shopping bags and Amazon boxes that were arriving daily. We could leave out some of the kid messes and didn’t have to clean up like we were never coming back. It also helped alleviate that unsettled feeling that can make it hard to get a good night’s sleep while travelling. Truth be told, I felt very uncomfortable asking our friends to stay at their place for so long. My husband, who is much better at asking for help than me, decided to do it anyway, and I’m glad he did because this helped immensely. So if you’re on the fence about asking someone for help during a long trip back, I’d say JUST DO IT.
In Houston, our first stop was to stay at a Marriott to give all of us an opportunity to sleep as needed and recover from the long flight and jet lag. This was a good move on our part because it is hard on me when I can’t predict the kids’ sleep schedules and I want everyone to be as comfortable as possible. Having a little extra space and not feeling obligated to entertain family members or be on their schedules was a good transition plan. However, after Jon and I had a few days in Austin to ourselves and returned to Houston, we felt ready to stay with relatives and be a little more social. I’d highly recommend taking a little time for yourself at the beginning of the trip if you can swing it. It helped us feel productive as we were able to get some work done on our storage unit - a big goal for the trip - and have some enjoyable time with friends without kids.
The part of our trip that was just for fun was to visit San Antonio for a couple of days. We stayed at a wonderful hotel, the St. Anthony, which I adore. The design is fabulous - I’d rank it up there with the other popular San Antonio hotel, Hotel Emma. And the location is perfect for me. It’s not quite on the River Walk so you don’t hear all of the noise, but it is a short three minute walk away so you can still walk down for dinner. The four of us fit quite comfortably in a suite, and the kids loved that the front desk staff let them pick out toys from a little toy basket kept behind the counter. I’m planning a post all about San Antonio for later, so keep an eye out.
Cell Phones - There are a couple of different approaches to US cell service. If you’ve got a US number that you use through a VOIP provider, then it is easy to change out your Kiwi SIM card for an American prepaid one and simply use the data to make calls. Alternatively, you could stick with your New Zealand provider. Under our plan, there is a NZ$7 (US$4.50) per day fee to continue to use our Kiwi plan in the US. If your trip isn’t too long, that might be the cheapest option. I think it is interesting prior to our move, it was a US$10 per day charge to use our US number internationally. Why does it cost twice as much under US plans?
What is the longest trip you feel comfortable taking to remain sane? I’ve decided two weeks is probably my maximum, especially with all of the moving we did on this trip.
