Home, but what day is it?

Tuesday, October whatever


Wake up call at 3:30 AM. Ugh. The hotel provided us with a light breakfast and were on the road by 4:30 to the airport.  Our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt was uneventful and on time. They even served a nice breakfast on this 2.5 hour flight.

Arriving at Frankfurt was the beginning of a very long day! Waiting in lines, passport control, security checks, waiting in more lines more security checks and passport controls. Then, there was something wrong with the plane that had to be fixed, so more waiting and waiting..........encouraging words from United staff.......lots of apologies.

Or flight was to have left at 12:15PM, to arrive in San Francisco for our connection to Boise at about 4:00PM; leave for Boise around 6:00 and be home by 9:00.

Well, the United 747 needed a small part for some emergency door which had to be flown in from somewhere else. We finally got off the ground at about 4:00PM, knowing that we'd miss the Boise connection. (Mind you, this is a ten hour flight of 500 people!). Then, since we'd been on the ground for so long, the pilots and crew didn't have enough time left on their clock to go all the way to SF so it was decided to land in Chicago and get a new crew.

We finally got to SF, then had go through customs which was actually quite efficient, and meet with the United agent to find out how we would get to Boise and where we would spend the night. Give some credit to United, they were expecting us and had already rebooked all 20+ of us on a flight at 10:00 next morning. They provided us with a hotel voucher for the DoubleTree and some meal vouchers.

From our original wake up call in Athens, to the hotel room in SF, we had been "up" for 30 hours. But no rest for the weary, we had to be up again by 5:00 to get the shuttle back to the airport. (Note: it was a blessing to be back in an "American" hotel room!)

We arrived back home in Boise by about 12:15PM on Wednesday. Took a taxi home, dropped off our stuff, and immediately went to Merritt's for a cheeseburger!