Our Trip to Europe

Day 39 – Paris to Tampa

Got up extremely early to shower, dress and finalize our packing. We were in the lobby before 4am to catch our shuttle. By 4:30 we had determined that they weren’t coming and tried to get the front desk person to call us a cab. He spoke very little English and didn’t seem to be too bright!! The first cab never arrived either and we had to ask him to call another one. We finally got a cab around 5am and headed for the airport. We had been told that the cab would run us about 50€ but the driver insisted on 60€ because he had put our suitcases in and out of the trunk of his cab. We didn’t have time to argue with him so we forked over. Our day was not starting on a positive note!! We finally checked in with the airlines, checked our luggage and headed through security to our boarding gate. We only had about 15 minutes before we started boarding.

Our first flight took us to Milan, Italy. We ran through that airport as they had changed our boarding gate and it was way over in a different wing. Made that plane and settled in for a LONG flight. We were on Alitalia Airlines and I have to say they really treat you well. We were fed a really good meal, given snacks and free wine!! And we each had a little TV in the back of the seat in front of us that allowed us to choose what movie we wanted to watch and we could even play video games. Of course, you can only catch a few minutes of sleep here and there as you are so uncomfortable. Got to JFK, grabbed our luggage, it was all there, to go through customs and then give our luggage back to the airlines for transfer to our next flight. We had enough of a break in flights that we grabbed something to eat and then caught our flight to Atlanta. That flight was uneventful and we arrived in time to catch our final leg of the trip to Tampa. Even though our day had started on the wrong foot, all our flights were pretty much on time and we didn’t run into any real problems. We arrived in Tampa at about 8:45 to find two of our three bags waiting for us. We had to file a claim for our one bag which, of course, was the one we had put the majority of our souvenirs in. Heather came and picked us up and we headed to our home and our first night in our own bed in a long time.