Saturday, February 26, 2011

Coming Home--Feb19

This is the fancy-schmancy Mercedes we were seated next to while drinking our water
Our dry breakfasts were in plastic bags
Here's our gate for a flight to Munich

Kevin got to eat both of our chocolate desserts
Are those sleepy eyes I see?
We tried these comfy chairs in the Munich Airport
The very sweet "Welcome Home" display awaiting us on our dining room table.

Oh, I am soooo annoyed--I spent I don't know how long last night writing up this entry and the auto save wasn't working. Good grief!!

6:10 am at Gate B-5 here in the Capital City

Funny night. I'm not sure what time we laid down. Iwas having the most bizarre dreams. Dreaming that I wasn't sleeping. Dreaming that 3 boys were in our room--can't remember why--like around 11-12, 17, and 19 years old. I gave the younger 2 a kiss, saying "no one should go to bed without a good night kiss." Then some street boys came in. I even dreamed that our dog Roxy was in the room--except in the dream she was a male sheep fuzzy sheepdog--and when the door opened "he," of course, ran off, and was downstairs running through a huge hotel lobby. Later a female dog of the same breed came over to me begging for Roxy to stay with her in AbbyLand!!

Then the alarm on Toni's phone went off. I turned on the light wondering why neither my alarm nor the wake-up call had come. It was only midnight!

So back to sleep. Toni's polite little alarm goes off again. And again, my alarm doesn't and still no wake-up call from the desk. So I was thinking, thank goodness for Toni's alarm--at least IT was working.

It was only after we were both up that I discovered it was only 3 AM! Oh well! Kevin showered and laid back down. I showered and fooled around with my stubborn hair half of forever. We finally threw in the last of the dirty clothes and the toiletries and headed down to the lobby. The taxi driver was already there. We left Toni's phone and charger at the desk, got our "dry breakfasts" in plastic grocery bags, settled the bill and got in the taxi. We were all checked in at the airport by about 5:10.

We decided to go on up the escalator and wait up there. Bad decision. At the base of the stairs we just showed our passports. No problem. We went up the escalator and RIGHT THERE was the security screening checkpoint. Great! So we went over to the wall and sat down to drink our waters (part of the breakfast). Nope. A security dude came over and said we weren't allowed to drink there--we'd have to go back downstairs. Both escalators were going up so we had to take the stairs down. We sat in the empty seats of a nearly-empty cafe beside a Mercedes Benz and tried to down the water. I couldn't do it too fast because I'd already drunk a 7-up and most of a bottle of water in the motel room. No hurry really because our flight wasn't until 7:10

6:35 PM in Chicago

By the way, our dry breakfast consisted of a green apple, a ham/cheese sandwich made with 3 slices of white bread, and chocolate dessert and the offending bottle of water.

Liquids gone we went back through passport control and through security and then we truly began our setting for the day:
2 hours at the Capital Airport
2 hours 15 minutes flight to Munich
4 hours 15 minutes in the airport at Munich
9 1/2 hours from Munich to Chicago
5 hours wait in Chicago (1 1/2 hours spent going through all the security stuff: MANY very long lines of people waiting to have their passports checked; got lugguge finally off the carousel, went through customs, re-checked luggage [a lady there was herding everyone to the right conveyor belt to re-check their bags. She was scanning the code on the bags and rattling off terminals and gate #'s but I didn't realize that quick enough to pay close attention to what she was saying--and our flight wasn't yet showing on the screen because we had such a long wait], got to the right terminal by bus, went through security again)
Flight to Boise 2 1/2 hours
=27 hours PLUS getting up 2 hours before the airport and driving at least 2 hours to get home from Boise
=31 hours of FUN!

Finally got to talk to the kids on the phone there in the Chicago airport. We weren't allowed to get out our phones during the whole passport/customs rigmarole. We could have made a call immediately on coming to the gate--while still in the plane--but I knew that wasn't enough time.

I've had 3 meat/cheese sandwiches today!! one from my dry breakfast, one from the flight to Munich and one on the transatlantic flight. Smile! We'd also had pasta, salad, etc near the beginning of the long flight but my tummy wasn't cooperating at that point. I'd had two precious pink Pepto Bismal chewies Friday night and had to chew 2 more on the flight. But here in Chicago I was able to do the fried rice, veggies and orange chicken at the Food Court. Funny thing! It was SO HOT in the Food Court seating area (no, not just me--SMILE-Kevin was hot, too) that we couldn't eat in there.

Things I didn't need on this trip

Foot/hand warmers (we just didn't do that much walking)
Black underalls
Two of the sweaters
Shampoo (plenty in hotels)
Tea bags

Glad I had on this trip

Pepto Bismal
Hand sanitizer
Tide hand wash packets
Cotton swabs
Febreze
Puzzle book
Bible
Hair gel
Adapter-converters
Neutrogena hand lotion
Thread/Needle
Small packs of tissues
Notebook
Cash book

Wish I had brought with me

pencil sharpener
another light-weight long-sleeve shirt
lap top computer !!
mesh scrubber of wash clothe
swim suit
handle to razor

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