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Ellen Isaacs | |
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Travel Journal: Mohonk, NY, Switzerland, & Italy
Day 20: September 12, 1999
Today was the sad end of our trip -- it was time to fly home. We woke at 5am, both sleepy but eager to get going. We had a quick breakfast in hotel and then off we went. Things went smoothly returning the car (we even picked up a cart right there in the parking lot) and then checking the bags. We went to the gate and found a big plane to take us 200 miles to Munich. Who knows why. I spent the rest of the francs on dark chocolate bars. Yummy. The first leg went just fine, we found the gate at Munich airport, going through triple security getting on the plane for some reason, but there was only a small delay and seats were fine. So far so good. The flight from Munich to NY went smoothly, although it took over 8 hours. Walendo was able to sleep a bit on the plane, but I couldn't. I watched (and listened to) Entrapment while Walendo just watched parts of it. In NY we landed okay and went to get our bags. Mine were there, but Walendo's didn't come out. We thought we were going to have to submit a report and go through a big hassle, but he took one trip around the place and found it sitting by another carousel. No idea why, but we were happy to find it. We then were stopped by the Delta staff who offered to check our bags through with TWA. We weren't all that comfortable with the idea, since they're not really connecting flights, but it was very nice that they offered. We talked to the woman and it seemed like she was going to have to finagle to make it happen, so we decided to play it safe and drag the bags to the TWA terminal. On the way out, again a Delta staff person stopped us to ask what we needed and showed us a picture of the terminal bus we wanted. They were amazingly nice. On the bus to Terminal 5, we had a friendly bus driver. At one point, we got blocked in by a limo who drove up alongside us when there was a taxi in front of us. The bus driver just lay on the horn in a constant stream while the limo guy slowly got out and took care of his own needs. The taxi driver was laughing and the whole bus was cheering on our driver. She was saying, "He's special, his needs are more important than ours." It was funny. I like NY-style politeness - you're rude if you get in other's way, not if you don't say "hello." At TWA, we checked in at first class and I decided to upgrade to 1st class for $100. We were so tired, it seemed worth it. While we waited for the plane, Walendo called his mom but she wasn't there, too bad. It turned out we were on a big plane that had tons of room between the seats so you could completely recline. The food didn't turn out to be that great, even though it was fancy and served in a luxurious way. But still, it was great being able to lie back and be comfortable. I watched Notting Hill, which was decent, a good plane movie, and then finally slept a little bit at the end. (They also let you watch your own personal movie, but it turned out the one on the screen was the one I wanted to see.) Walendo slept some more and read, again foregoing the movie. Finally, in SF we picked up our luggage without any problems, called the limo service and, even though they didn't have our reservation, they picked us up anyway and gave us the quoted price. That went pretty smoothly. Once we got in and "hosed down" for a bit, we drove down to get Libby at Russ & Judy's. Libby was very happy to see us, though I think Walendo was even happier to see her. We chatted with R&J for a bit, gave them our gifts, and headed back. We collapsed in the beds, and the trip was over. It was a long, wonderful vacation with lots of happy memories to pack into our history bag.
Things that we never understood:
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