Fiumicino, JFK and PDX

Tristemente, tutto deve finire! Sadly, everything must come to an end. But in our case the end only means planning for the next. What a trip!

Our close knit little group arose early in Rome to eat our last Italian breakfast and load up the vans. We were having our cappucini (thanks for the grammar lesson, John) and who should arrive in the breakfast room, but Jan and Pete! They were the only ones who could have slept in because they aren't headed home. They are picking up a car at the airport and heading to Orvietto. Their daughters Mackenzie and Zoe are meeting them on Sunday for more of Italy. Lucky buggers!

The rest of us, exhausted from 6 days in Rome and 11 days in Italy, Greece and Turkey, were sad to leave and happy at the prospect of seeing friends and family. I think my puppies might be missing us by now! I know I am missing Mom and Kyle and Lindsey! Our regular driver, Hassan, was there early to pack our bags in the vans and get us to our flight out of Fiumicino. We headed out, keeping our eyes peeled for any last look at Rome which we hadn't seen, perhaps a well dressed women on a vespa in red ribboned sandals. We easily made our flight and settled in for our trip home. Janet wasn't as settled as the rest of as, as she realized that she had dropped her passport! She had it to get on the plane, but didn't see it in her paperwork once she sat in her seat. A little panicked, she looked around the floor nearby. Scott, seeing her searching as he came down the aisle, kept his eyes to the floor. Just as a man was settling in, he shuffled his feet and Scott, out of the corner of his eye, noticed he kicked a little blue folder under his seat. It was a God thing. Scott reached over and picked up Janet's passport. She would never have found it under the seat a number of rows in front of her! That was the second time a Willis came to the rescue!

Everything went fairly well on the flight, at least for us. The woman with 2 small screaming children didn't have as smooth a flight. What a joy to have adult children! We landed at JFK and looked forward to a 4 hour layover. Unfortunately, our flight arrived about 45 minutes early, to extend our NYC time. Unfortunately, Linda didn't get us into a VIP lounge! That was her only job on the whole trip, but we don't blame her. So, don't know that I've spent much time at JKF until now. I didn't realized how blessed I've been all my life to not have flown through JFK before! What a mess! The we were going through customs. For some unknown reason, Delta didn't have the customs forms for us. No problem, they said, they will have a representative at the airport to meet us and give us forms. And we believed them! Silly us! There was no one there from Delta for a full flight from Rome. Finally a short little man with a New York attitude from Customs came out with the forms. He was going to keep control if it killed him. Several people almost did! He decided to give out only the Visa waiver forms first (about 5 people out of the entire plane of about 300 people). Then when a few people reached over to pick up a blank customs form he grabbed them and told us that if we didn't wait patiently he would take the forms and leave, he didn't care if the police came and arrested him, we weren't getting the forms unless we were nice! Short guy, big attitude. A little power hungry. We finally got our forms and made it through customs, even with Linda's over 3 ounce bottle of liquid skin miracle or whatever it was she bought on the ship and didn't pack in the checked baggage. It is nice that the Europeans don't have that 3 ounce rule! She was able to pack it in her checked bags at JKF and not have to sacrifice her skin just to get home! The other snaffu was that John and Sue were missing a bag! Yes, again, a bag gone, but to share the love, it was John and Sue instead of Janet this time. Again, a Voyager to the rescue! Bill, not to be detered, finally found it.

We finally found our gate and sat down for a beer. After the beer, Scott and Dan discovered there were too many duty free shops for us to be the right terminal. So we found the transportation gate and waited for the van to take us to the correct terminal. Judy was happily talking to her kids on the cell phone - it is sure nice to be easily and cheaply connected. We finally got to the correct gate, but after all that trudging from gate to terminal to gate to terminal, we were don't slogging our stuff around and we still had 3 hours to go. Ron and I watched the herd of bags, while others went to sit and have a bit to eat. We weren't quite ready for food or for moving more luggage! I just wanted to sit. And sit we did. The line to Chili's was really slow and the service was slower. It was fine as we had nowhere to go.

Finally, after getting in line to board our flight a little late, I found that at the end of the jetway, there was no plane! We weren't boarding a plane, we were boarding some kind of box on wheels and lifts! As soon as everyone was in the box, it lowered and started driving, or lurching along. We were in that box, thinking we were being shipped UPS instead of flying! We drove around that airport in a box! I still can't believe it. I think the driver was stopping at each plane, rolling down the window and asking if it was the plane to Portland. The entire box of people were roaring with laughter when Ron's suitcase fell over and almost ended the Googins lineage. Once on the tarmac, the two rear doors of the box suddenly popped open. I'll face Rome traffic and vespa near death experiences before I'd ride in one of those again!

We finally found our plane and yes, we were blessed again, the plane wasn't full. We were able to spread out with 1 couple per 3 seats. After about 18 hours of travel, one needs a little space. I think we all slept off and on until we reached Portland and HOME! It was nice to recognize the airport and listen to English! Even on the plane we heard lots of foreign language and the flight attendant doing the announcements was harder to understand than the planes in Italy! The best part for me was walking down to baggage claim and seeing my son. It was so good to see Kyle waiting for us and that was a great hug! I realize how much I did miss being home.

Just so that we realized the extent of our trip, the search wasn't over. We all found our bags, all except, who? John and Kyung Sook! It was the same garment bag that was so slow at customs at JFK. We were so tired, we were headed for the door when John's bag finally was spewed out onto the conveyor. The end of a memorable trip.

But wait! It isn't over! We have a party planned to see each other's photos and update the pedometer!

Pedometer: From the hotel at the airport to the Witcosky home in 17 days, we racked up 295,599 steps. That is about 88.6 miles. No wonder my toes are shorter than they used to be!
Photo update: Between Scott, John and the rest of us, we have shot about 295,599 photos! 150,000 by Scott, 145,00 by John and the rest of us combine to make 599. If we get the chip back from Sue's camera we may well have more photos than steps!