Saturday, July 12th, 2014

Oh no, time to leave Italy and get back to reality! Mark had checked out the night before and we’d informed the front desk that we’d be leaving by 8:00. Well, he got as much ready for breakfast as he could and (most importantly) got coffee going so we ate before the water taxi came. I had lightened my bag by leaving shirts I didn’t want and sunscreen, etc., so it was fairly easy to maneuver down the stairs. And the water taxi came right up on our side of the canal so so no schlepping over bridges. It was a beautiful morning with the sun lighting the tops of the buildings and Charlotte got the most out of the experience. We got to the airport in record time, even saw a little bunny on the grounds, and I thought Mark was being overcautious getting us there so early….until we reached the check in line. Oh my. And only two clerks.  It took over an hour to check in, and then we breezed through security and went to see if they had any of the kinder eggs Genevieve was addicted too. Nope, way too high end an airport for that. They did have really good gelato though, which even though we’d just had breakfast, and even though it was only about 10:30 in the morning, Charlotte and I had to have. We boarded our plane but then waited and waited and waited. Because they were still loading luggage. Because it took forever for people to check in.

We left about an hour late, but the flight was uneventful. When we got to Frankfurt, people were very stressed because of those tight connections, and the strange between terminal passport control lines were backing everything up. They herded us to this elevator to reach one that wasn’t so crowded but of course by the time we got there it was. Whatever, we didn’t have a tight connection. I felt bad for all of the people that missed their flights, and a bit better about the six hour wait in the airport on the way in. At least we didn’t have that to worry about! We stopped at a magazine stand that had kinder eggs and Genevieve bought them out, and then we checked the gate and then went to get lunch. This time we got sandwiches which were really good, German bread with Italian caprese.

Then our airplane boarded, oh, the seats are just so close together and it’s just so miserable to fly coach these days. But we made it and then when we got to SFO we got our Super Shuttle home. And we managed to unpack and do most of the laundry before we conked out!

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