SUNDAY MEMORIES
Judy Wills
Because our flight from Budapest was at 6:30 a.m., we had to get up about 2:15 a.m. to get ready, pack, and get on the shuttle bus by 3:30 a.m. We had showered the night before, so all we had to do was shave (Fred), put on makeup (Judy), finish packing, and off we went. There were 14 of us from the ship that were going to make that flight.
It was a 30-minute drive from the ship to the airport. And when we got there, it was a “hurry up and wait” situation. We waited 30 minutes for the counter personnel to arrive and begin taking customers. We were first in line, thank goodness. Even though we had our bags with us, she convinced us to check the larger bags, as the plane from Budapest to Amsterdam was “small.” The flight took off pretty much on time, and it was a two hour flight to Amsterdam. They did feed us breakfast, but it was nothing like we had before – a sandwich with either deli-thin slices of chicken, or cheese, with mayonnaise on it. Well, Fred doesn’t eat mayo in ANY form! But we were able to get him some slices of cheese and chicken that wasn’t too “polluted” from the mayo.
We had a fairly long layover in Amsterdam, which was good. Schiphol Airport is really big, and we had to go quite a ways to find our gate. Fred said it looked like the lady in Budapest had checked our bags all the way to Orlando, but he wasn’t sure. So when we had the attendant in Amsterdam check, sure enough, they were checked through. However, she said we had to pick them up in Atlanta and go through Customs there.
The flight from Amsterdam to Atlanta was nearly nine hours long. The fortunate thing about it was that we were on an Airbus, and were in the two-seat side, rather than the four-seat middle. I always enjoy flying with just Fred, rather than three of us across. They fed us lunch – we both had tortellini, salad, cheese and crackers. A few hours later they had wrap sandwiches for us – Fred had a “meatball” and I had a veggie wrap. Surprisingly tasty. And of course, there was always the pretzels and peanuts.
We finally arrived in Atlanta – really nice to realize we were back on US soil! We picked up our bags and headed through Customs and Immigration. Not a bad thing, and we got through fairly easily. We were glad to have that done in Atlanta, rather than having to do it in Orlando, when we were super tired.
The flight to Orlando was just barely over one hour. As we like to say, they hardly got up when they had to start down again! They did have time to hand out pretzels and soft drinks, but they were hurrying through it.
Richard Lynch picked us up and headed toward home. When we discovered they had not had dinner yet – and our tummys were growling – we agreed to meet at Panera for a light supper. Pam and Piper were waiting for us. We were able to tell them a little bit about our trip, but were so very ready to get home.
We unloaded our suitcases quickly, as I HAD to do a load of undies, since all we had needed to be washed before the next day. So with all that done, we were able to get to bed by about 10:00 p.m. We figured that we had been in the air about 13 hours, and had been awake about 25 hours – with only cat-naps on the airplane! We were truly and fully exhausted! We didn’t even set the clock to wake us up on Saturday – just decided to sleep our fill.
It was wonderful to be home and sleeping in our own bed.
But we are grateful and thankful that we had the wonderful experience of the Viking River Cruise Grand Tour. A cruise of a lifetime!
~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~
Old Things R New 
I’m so glad you got home safe and sound. You did have a lovely trip and lots of beautiful pictures and stories to remind you of it.
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Judy, thank you for sharing your travels. I have so enjoyed it.
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