Well our excursion in Italy had finally come to a close and it was time to go back home. Although the whole experience was amazing, I think we were all a little glad to be going back, to see English on the signs and understand the conversations around us.
Thankfully we were able to get the charter bus and we took that to the airport instead of the train. This saved us a lot of time and hassle and I'm really glad we did that instead.
Checking our baggage seemed to take a little longer than it should have, but we arrived early enough and we had plenty of time to spare, for the moment. As it turned out, we had an extra hour of spare time, although this pretty much screwed us over in Atlanta later on. But anyway, our flight landed a little late and we had some extra time to look through the duty free store.
So eventually the plane arrived and we were able to board. The flight to Atlanta was less than comfortable, to say the least. For whatever reason, I really wasn't able to sleep as much as I had planned, and the flight lasted almost 12 hours which just extended the unpleasantness.
But finally we landed around 5:10 and we were cutting it pretty close because our next flight was scheduled for 5:35. That flight, however, got delayed until 6:00 so we still had a little bit of hope. But then the plane in front of us at our gate took forever to leave. So we sat on the runway just waiting for this plane to get out of the way for at least 10 mintues, which, conveniently enough, was the difference of making out connection.
But at this point we were still hoping that we could make it somehow. So we rushed through the terminal as fast as we could. For whatever reason, international flights had to collect their own baggage and then recheck it. So that held us up. And of course, when we got to customs the line was unbelievably long. It took forever to get through that, but once we did, we sprinted to our terminal and of course just missed our flight by 5 minutes. Somehow, a couple people were able to make it on to the flight, which, if you ask me, is complete crap, they should have held the plane for the rest of us, especially since the 25 of us made up nearly half the flight.
But regardless, there were two flights left going to Cincinnati and it was pretty much a free-for-all. Everyone was trying to get on the 6:30 or 9:30 flight. Of course with my luck, I got the 9:30 flight, which, by the way, was delayed to 9:55. But this at least gave me a bunch of time to sit around and do nothing so I grabbed some dinner and a drink.
The flight to Cincinnati wasn't bad at all, I think. I'm not entirely sure, I fell asleep before we took off and after we landed. But once we landed, I was just thankful to be back, but of course the difficulties didn't end there. You'd think that collecting my luggage would be a simple task, but that was botched as well. I waited at baggage claim #1 that said Atlanta for about 15 minutes before I was tired of waiting and went to customer service to ask them wear my bags were. Well, they scanned my ticket and said that my bags should be right there at baggage claim #5. So I went over there, and sure enough, there was my bag at claim #5, which was conveniently labeled "Philadelphia".
Once I got my bags I met my dad outside and from there it was a straight drive back home. Unfortunately, home is a 4 hour drive to Cleveland, but luckily there weren't any problems with this part of my journey. I eventually got home at 4:30 AM, and later the next day added it all up and found out that I had one a total of about 27 hours of travel.
All and all, it wasn't the greatest return home, but I would definitely do it all again for a chance to go back to Italy. That was one of the funnest trips I've been on and I can't wait for another opportunity like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment