May 30, 2025

Homeward bound


Lago Maggiore from the air

What a day!  Up at 2:00 AM to clean up and do the final packing. At 3:00 Conny knocked at our door and we schlepped the luggage down to the lobby.  She had a breakfast bag (more like a feast) for each of us! We said our goodbyes and were loaded into a black Mercedes Van to take us the 45 minutes to the Milan Airport.

Checking in was a breeze, the airport was very unbusy. We made our way through security and were at the gate before the coffee shop opened.  We finally got our coffee at 5:30. The Milan airport is not huge, but it is big. Our gate was just a door to a waiting bus which took us to our plane. We had good seat and were off on time with our luggage verified by the Lufthansa app. We had a great view of Lago Maggiore as we hopped over the Alps to Frankfort. In the picture we can identify the 2 Islands we visited and the approximate area of our hotel.  It is a treasured picture.

Frankfort airport is huge.  We landed in section A and boarded a bus to section A in Terminal 1 gate A1.  Our next flight was waiting for us at Gate Z69.  The Lufthansa app estimated a walk of 17 minutes. That stretched into 30 minutes as we went through passport control and toilette stops. Our wonderful travel agent Tonya made sure we had enough time to make the connection.

The Lufthansa app told us that our luggage had been loaded onto LH444 our Airbus 300-330 that would take us on our 10-hour flight to Atlanta. Due to some sort of situation we were delayed 30 minutes in boarding, but once we were on board we settled in nicely.  Lufthansa has a bit different nomenclature for their classes.  They have first class, which is totally posh, then a small section of business class, only 12 seats in what Delta would call premium. Then What Luthansa called Premium, Delta would call comfort Plus and that is where we found ourselves. It was really quite nice as we got real glasses for wine and better food than the hoi polloi in economy.  Ah, the good life!

We landed in the rain only 10 minutes late and taxied a long way to F terminal.  We breezed through passport control thanks to Global Entry and scored our luggage.  We were out the door and on the shuttle to the car park in a trice. After $420 for parking, at 4:00 PM, the start of Atlanta rush hour, in the rain, we made our way up I-75 to Chattanooga and home.

Finally, at 7:20 PM (that is at 1:20 AM Friday in Baveno, or 24 hours of travel) we arrived at 4423 Comet Trail.  It’s all good!


Home Sweet Home

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