The Journey Home

On Monday we got to the Frankfurt Airport in plenty of time for our flight.  The Lufthansa flight was on an A380.  It's a huge plane.  We were sitting in the lower level where the economy seats were, in the middle section in the row behind the bulkhead seats.  Per Seat Guru, in the middle section, the two seats on the left don't have entertainment boxes under the seat taking up foot space.  Wrong.  Jim's seat had an entertainment box.  I offered to switch, but he said no.  What was even more annoying than that was in the bulkhead seats directly in front of us there were two infants.  Yes, two babies.  If one wasn't crying, the other one was.  Or they were both crying at once.  There were only very brief periods with no crying.  For 11+ hours.  It seemed like much longer.  Ugh!  We had never flown on Lufthansa before, and the itinerary indicated that there was 'no meal.'  It was quite the opposite.  The food just kept coming.  A snack, then lunch, another snack, then dinner.  And the drinks.  They kept coming by with soft drinks, water, wine beer, etc.  I had a couple of glasses of wine, to numb the pain of hearing the crying babies.  It wasn't enough.

Our flight took off a little late, so of course we arrived in San Francisco late.  Monte was there waiting for us.

Thanks for the ride Monte!!

It was good to get home.  I thought Riley was going to have a heart attack, he was so excited to see us!  Sleeping in our own bed was heaven.  When I woke up the next morning I found an email from Barbara.  Lufthansa was on strike Tuesday.  We got out just in time!

To summarize our trip:

We had a great time, even with the challenges and hiccups.  We enjoyed the time we spent with Nigel & Carol, Norm & Georgia, Sarah & Dave, Darcy & Pam, Phillipe & Anita, Jo and last but not least, Barbara, Danielle, Sascha & Dagmar.  As much as we enjoyed spending time with others, we equally enjoyed the time we spent on our own.  Jim is my favorite travel partner.

I enjoyed all of our destinations, cities and small towns.  Some places I would like to return to in order to explore the area in more depth.  It doesn't matter how long the trip is, it's never enough time to see everything.  I hope there will be more trips in our future.