First Holiday without Parents

Hi Everyone,

February 2016 this signified the start of a brand new adventure for me and my sister, we booked our first holiday without our parents.

Without much planning we booked a holiday to New York City for October 2016 although we agreed the dates we would be going, we didn't think about everything this involved.

Once the holiday was booked I didn't think about getting a Visa, Insurance or tickets until the month before we were due to go.

So the year passed by quite fast, birthdays came and went, the summer was over. It was now September, NYC was just over a month away and we hadn't applied for ours ESTAs, I hadn't looked into any insurance and had not bought any tickets for attractions.

Luckily I managed to do this all quite quickly and it was finally sorted. One thing I will say is shop around for insurance there are so many places willing to completely rip you off.

Then it was finally October!!!! By this point I was so excited but still extremely nervous on the prospect of going away with out either parent.

So then came time to go to the airport, we checked in online which eased my nerves a fair bit. But we still had to get to the airport, check bags and go through security. Thankfully this all went smoothly we had breakfast did a bit of shopping and boarded the plane.

At this point I was perfectly fine, I didn't think anything could possibly go wrong. The plane took off, the flight was one of the best flights I've ever been on.

That's what I thought until the plane was getting ready to land, all of a sudden we heard a clunking sort of noise. At this point I knew something was wrong I hoped it was nothing but I had a feeling it wasn't great. The Cabin crew were huddled together talking, I could hear people panicking. The plane had started to ascend instead of descend, the announcement came out, we were told we would be making an emergency landing. My heart sank, I couldn't remember the last time I was this scared, thousands of miles away from home, on the first holiday without our parents and this happened.

The Cabin crew then instructed us through what would happen. I was close to having a panic attack but thankfully we landed safe.

It turned out the landing gear was working fine however the information wasn't transmitted to the cockpit currently.

We were greeted at JFK by the NYPD and fire department and had one of the most amazing holidays of our lives.

One thing this taught me is that you never know what will happen but you just have to take the gamble. It's not scared me enough to not fly again, I still love flying as much as I did before. But now I want to go on so many more adventures.

I don't when the next adventure will be, hopefully this year or next but I do know that whenever I get the opportunity I'll take it no matter how big or small.

Until next time,

Lou x