Last summer, my family and I decided to take a flight to Hungary! However, the getting there part was ridiculous yet incredibly lucky and one of the best experiences of my life. Starting from the Detroit airport, our mission was to get to Europe by the next day, but because my aunt is cheap, she found the most undeniably horrible airplane tickets I have ever seen. We were to take a Delta sky airplane to Minnesota, then to Amsterdam, and finally to Budapest. So we had to fly backwards 2 hours, before we could actually start flying towards Europe…. and this was cheaper than a direct flight. Crazy, I know, but I was too excited to care.
â–º QUARTER FINALIST 2012 TEEN TRAVEL WRITING SCHOLARSHIP
However… nobody prepared us for how incredibly big the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was, which wouldn’t have been a problem if our first flight hadn’t been so late. In fact, as we got off of our first flight, the first thing I heard was our names being called on the intercom because our next flight was about to take off. Frantically we got a nice African man working at the airport to give us a ride on his golf cart, and it literarily took 20 minutes to get to our airplane check in… just to find out our plane had taken off. I remember looking at my mom and knowing we had just lost almost 2,000 dollars… and now we would have to pay to get back home. We were driven to a help center, where my aunt made a lot of calls, and we found out that they could have us on a flight the next morning to New York, and from there to Budapest! If that wasn’t lucky enough, they also got us two reservations to the Hilton hotel and money to spend on food in the airport! Not that we needed it that night because when we walked into the airport Pizza Hut, they were closing and gave us the 2 remaining pizzas, they had not sold, for free! I cannot explain how astonished and lucky I felt in that moment. I couldn’t wait to see what other luck would come our way!
We went outside because we were told that a bus would come to take us to the Hilton, and it was an unexpectedly small Hilton bus with no one else but us to ride in! But the best part was when we entered the Hotel. Instantly my mind screamed 5 star hotel! I had never seen anything so spectacular. There was a jungle-like garden, a glass ceiling, and floors going up as high as I could see. We were given 2 suites for free to the most expensive hotel I have ever stepped foot into. My cousin and I played video games, watched TV, and used up all the free stuff in our suite until we finally fell asleep at 4 a.m. Next morning, we awoke to grumbling stomachs and went down stairs to see what we could buy. Turns out they give out breakfast for free! And it was good food too, like bacon, cereal, bagels, etc… I ate so much that I literarily took the stairs and ran up 23 floors just to try to burn it off. Once our parents ate, we took the bus back to the airport and spent our money slips on ice cream and coffee cakes. Now that I think about it, it was more fun going to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport than exploring Budapest itself!
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