The day started like any other travel day in Boise – EARLY! However, it was a bit surprising to be awakened at 0-almost light:30. Must be summer in Boise. And, of course, the alarm had little to do with awakening us. It’s hard to sleep on travel day.
So we were up, dressed and even had a few minutes to read the paper before Steve and Billie (and James, the Uber guy) arrived.
We loaded up and headed off to the airport, checked in, thru security, Einsteined, and onto the plane with moments to spare.
The flight to Chicago was, well, a flight to Chicago. We read, napped, read, napped…
Then we spent a relaxing 5 hour layover waiting for our flight to Munich.
The only really interesting connections we had were in Germany. Our flight was about an hour late leaving Chicago, and we didn’t have much more than an hour layover in Munich. So… we deplaned as quickly as we could only to find that the reserved wheel chair for Steve wasn’t there. So we began to walk (slowly) toward passport control. Eventually we were able to grab a vacant chair that we found along the way and that added a bit of speed. But when we got to passport control, not having an Official Wheel Chair Pusher pushing the chair, we waited thru the rather lengthy (but reasonably moving) line to get our passports stamped. That accomplished we quickly made our way to the gate that had just been added to our electronic boarding passes – wrong gate. Find out which gate we should be at, toddle off to that gate, be met by a very nice lady who took over wheel chair duties (where was she 30 minutes ago?) and we boarded with minutes to spare. Good thing to, because when they closed the door the plane started to move. There were even passengers still stowing their bags. These people were in a hurry!
Arriving in Berlin we were met by a wheel chair pusher (there were actually 2 of them but Cheryl was feeling very much better about walking so we dismissed the second one.) who pushed Steve thru the airport, past baggage claim and out to the curb where the Uber could meet us. I booked an Uber and we waited the designated 3 minute waiting time while watching our driver circling the airport (on my phone, not in real life). Eventually he called to say ‘Where are you?’ – at least I assume that’s what he was saying. Turns out he didn’t speak English. But that’s OK because our wheel chair pusher had mercy on his poor charges and took over communicating with the Uber driver. Two phone calls and 20 minutes later they figured out that we were outside baggage claim and the Uber lot is upstairs outside ticketing. We eventually got to where we needed to be and enjoyed an uneventful half-hour ride into town.
We got checked in, dropped Steve off at their room to sleep and Cheryl, Billie, and I went in search of lunch. We found a wonderful little store-front serving near-eastern food (Sorry, can’t be more specific than that, but it was really good!) and ate al fresco watching traffic (car and foot) along Budapester Str.
After lunch Billie returned to the hotel to nap while Cheryl and I wandered a bit, looking for likely places for breakfast and such.
Then we returned to the hotel for naps before joining Steve and Billie for dinner. Back at the room to uploaded photos, worked the kinks out of Cheryl’s knotted-up legs, called the Shelds to arrange for dinner tomorrow evening, and succumbed to the build-up of sleep deprivation.
Tomorrow is a designated sight-seeing day. We’ll see how much actual sight-seeing we get done. But one way or another it will be a great time.
Cheers,
R