Goodbye New York. Hello Brazil!

After a long flight to Rio de Janeiro

Once my mom left New York, Russell and I had a few days to pack, clean, and eat all the delicious food we could before getting on the 13 hour flight to Brazil. Traveling from the East Coast to Brazil is sooooooo much easier than traveling from the West Coast. Often from California you often first have to fly to Florida or North Carolina, so the East Coast trip shaves off 5 of 6 hours - NICE!

This flight to Brazil was the easiest one yet, not only because it was from the East Coast, but also because Russell and I got the emergency row of three seats all to ourselves - read: tons of leg room! I also invested 16 dollars in a travel pillow - you know, the ones that go around your neck. What a good investment that was! Now I can doze off without my head falling off to the side. It really adds another level of comfort to long trips.

On top of that, the turbulence was not bad at all. It was mostly smooth with a few parts like being in a car driving down a country road - a country road in the US - not bad at all. Nothing like my last two trips to Brazil - once the plane has such bad turbulence that the plane literally fell like 5-10 feet out of the sky while flying over the Amazon. That was my worst flying experience ever. But this trip was good (as were my flights to NYC from Cali and Buffalo, as well as my flights to and from Mexico), so my confidence in flying has been boosted up.

Leaving NYC