...and back again

Well all good things come to an end eventually.  Our trip was officially over at the end of the day today, and it wasn't a very fun day either.  We woke up to our alarms at 4:30.  Luckily we had packed everything up last night and all we had to do was put our pajamas into one of the backpacks and change into our traveling clothes, which were set out.  We left the hotel around 5 after Melissa had the front desk call a cab (made sure it was a van) and we all piled in. It was probably 5:20 or so when we got to the airport and checked in. The woman working the desk was astounded in our packing:

"You have 6 people?"     yes

"Four Kids??"    yes

"No checked bags?!?!?"     yes

"....I love your family."

She wasn't the only one today to be amazed at how little we had packed for such a long trip either. We had comments from other travelers, customs workers, and stewardesses.  But back to the nitty-gritty...  Our first flight was about 2 hours, from Naples to Frankfurt, Germany. Our seats were not booked together, and it wouldn't let us check in and reserve any, but we were assured by the family-lover that we could get that worked out when boarding, but nobody ever told anyone else, because when finally somebody came to the gangway desk and we brought it up, she couldn't do anything either, and assured it could be done in the plane.  So they made us wait until EVERYONE else was seated, and then one of the stewards politely asked people if they would like to change seats. To a worse seat. Probably without mentioning they were trying to seat a family together. Eventually they got 2 seats together so Melis and Katie could sit, and a time later they got 2 seats across the aisle and Mary and Joey sat there.  And then nobody else would move. We asked if they could offer the people to sit in business class but apparently they couldn't offer upgrades like that. But the steward was getting pretty irritated and finally just said to us, "okay just sit there (business class), we don't have any meals for you but we need to leave so just sit there, it'll be fine".  Okay that was reassuring I guess, but I'd like to sit and take off please, so we sat there. I was surprised how little difference there was between business class and the cheap seats, other than a little more butt and leg room. Not really worth the difference in price to me, but that's me.

Once in Frankfurt we had a pretty short layover, and kinda had to do the same process all over again.  Our seats were all over the place, but Melissa handled the woman at the desk while I ran over and got some plane snacks for the kids.  And I guess the woman told Melis that she could have gone and reserved seats herself, for only a small fee of 25 Euros, per person, per leg of the trip. Umm, for about $500, no I think we will just have you change them now. For free.

We boarded for this flight and after a little while I was tapped on my shoulder.  Excuse me I think you're in my seat. No they changed things at the desk, my ticket is for this seat since I'm with my kids. No, I booked this seat when I bought it, see here's my ticket.  No they changes things at the desk, I need to sit by my kids.  Well I don't know since this was my seat all along.  Fine. So we went and talked to the stewardess about it, and then she had to call the desk, and then someone had to make the decision that, yes someone with 2 kids needs to sit next to them and she needed to move to the other seat. Which was still an aisle seat, and a little further up the plane. I understand that she didn't get to sit next to her friends, but so be it.  She really was pretty good about the whole thing, more irritated that it would happen.  This flight was 9 hours or so, and we just watched movies the whole time, other than taking Joey and Lily to the bathroom like 5 times, and it's not easy to fit 2 people into those little bathrooms. Melis got Katie to sleep for a few hours, so I'm sure her flight was much better than on the way here. Mary occupied herself the whole time which was awesome.

We got to O'hare and the way their international terminal is situated is stupid. You have to take a train over to the main terminals, outside security by the way, so we had to go back through security a second time. Why they couldn't have that train go to the secure side I don't know, but there it is. Oh, you have like one ounce of water in your bottles, so we have to check things. We can't drink it or throw it out here, it has to be on the other side of security, and then have to send the empty bottle back through the scanner to make sure that there's nothing inside. Even though they were the ones dumping said bottle. Still gotta take our shoes off too. I'm a little sour of the whole thing, even though I should have known better.  Good thing we had 3 hours layover, because it was almost an hour and a half spent waiting in this security line.

We killed the rest of the time and boarded our plane. Lily was asleep before we even took off, after all we had been travelling for the last 16 hours.  And then we took off and 20-50 minutes later we were home. We were a bit loopy so I don't know how long a flight it actually was. My dad was waiting for us right outside security and told us he thought he saw Melissa's aunt Karen.  It turns out they were on their way back from a little trip of their own and they must have been on THE EXACT SAME PLANE. They had been bumped to first class and arrived after we had already boarded, and if they hadn't been bumped would have been sitting like 2 rows in front of us. It's a small world sometimes.

Half an hour after Dad picked us up we were back in our own house, and probably half an hour after getting inside our house we were back in our own beds.  We had gone there and back again, and it's something that we [hopefully] won't ever forget.