No Place Like Home

Well, I don't think we'll be eager for more flying anytime soon. In general, Jeff and I have been fairly successful in both business and pleasure flights. But this trip was rather exhausting. We were up at 5:30 in the morning (Germany time) and at the airport with plenty of time. That was about the only thing that went right yesterday!

After sitting at the gate for 2 ½ hours due to a faulty fuel gauge, we finally took off for the 9 hour flight across the ocean to JFK. Since we obviously missed our connecting flights, we spent hours in the baggage claim, re-booking, baggage re-check, and security lines. Since it was a very large flight that was very late, most people had missed connections, so we were in good company in hot, crowded conditions. After we finally made it to our gate for our new flight, we found out that that plane was late. Not terrible in itself, but we still had one more connection to make with only a 50 minute layover between! So of course, there we were again, dashing through the next airport to make our flight, just as we did on the way over to Germany. I guess it all comes full circle!

Once we finally arrived in Alabama, we realized we had very little American money to pay for our taxi. We got home and had to search the house for spare change to make up the difference! We eventually got to bed, some 25 hours after we had gotten up that morning. Let me just say, Europe is wonderful, America is great, but somewhere in between is not much fun.