Day 18: The Journey Home

[Tuesday, June 25]

[Click on any photo for a bigger view]

Today we traveled home. It was a very long day, just as the day(s) of our travel to Poland. It only took one calendar day because we left very early and gained back the 6 hour time difference. We had booked a car to take us to the airport, leaving the hotel at 4:30 AM to give us plenty of time to get to the airport and pass through security for our 7:30 AM flight. We had decided to go with the early flight so that we wouldn't have to drive back home from Newark in the dark after a long day of travel.

We set the alarm for 3:30, probably too conservative. Thankfully, we turned in early last night, because both of us had a fitful night's sleep. Travel anxiety. I got at most 4 hours of sleep.

The driver was already there for us when we went down to the lobby at 4:15. It was already light out, since Kraków is pretty far north of Pennsylvania and Poland is on the far western edge of its time zone. The driver loaded our stuff into his Mercedes minivan and drove us through very light traffic about 20 minutes to the airport. (I was surprised to see several people already out on morning walks!) We got to the airport very early.

The Kraków airport is not very big. One terminal. Security was pretty easy. We had ordered a breakfast box from the hotel (quite generous, as it turned out), which was included in our last night's hotel charge, and spent the next couple of hours trying to relax a bit before the travel ordeal really began.

We were flying Austrian Airlines back to Newark. Austrian is a low-cost airline, but we enjoyed the experience despite being in 'steerage' all the way. It was a one hour flight to Vienna, followed by a two hour layover, then the long, nine hour flight to Newark. It's not much farther from Vienna to Newark than our long outbound Newark to Frankfurt leg, but the flight took much longer. The prevailing winds made it so that our groundspeed was about 50 mph slower than the outbound long leg. Despite this, the return flights were much more pleasant than the outbound flights.

The one-hour flight was on an Embraer 195, a short haul jet with reasonable comfort. We got to see the hills, valleys, and mountains (Carpathian and Alps) along the way, and flew over the Danube just before landing in Vienna.

Our experience at the Vienna airport was better than at Frankfort. More comfortable waiting areas, more bathrooms, a little less insanity. The only weird thing was that they made all the 'steerage' passengers wait in a separate waiting area away from the gate until all the priority passengers had boarded. But it wasn't too bad. We thought the flight was going to be delayed because of the time at which the flight started boarding, but the check-in was run very efficiently. We were off the ground on time. The airplane was a Boeing 777-200, a long haul aircraft not as big as the 747 we flew to Frankfort on, but noticeably more comfortable.

The crew, dressed in red, was friendly and machine-like in its efficiency. Unlike many American airlines, alcoholic drinks were free. I had a glass of wine after take-off, thinking that might help me nod off. A bit later, the stewardess brought me a glass of scotch that I didn't even ask for. Maybe she could tell by the look in my eye that I really could use a nap. We had a lunch right after that, including another glass of wine. And, low and behold, it worked. After getting up to stretch (easier from the seats we'd chosen) I tried to zone out with my white noise app playing rain through my headphones. I did manage a couple of hours or so of much needed shut-eye.

Soon enough, the in-flight display indicated we were over Labrador. For the last two hours, I watched the progress while Vicky knitted and watched a few episodes of Reacher on her display.

The view from steerage in the 777-200

We landed a few minutes early, just before 1:30 PM Newark time, after 9 hours in the air. Customs was a breeze. Our baggage was among the last off the plane, but we got it without problems. I called the parking company and they told me where to wait for the van to the parking lot.

It was pretty hot in Newark, close to 90, but the ride to the lot was short. And there was our van, ready for us to drive home. We got on the road before 3:30. We decided to get a an hour out of Newark, then buy gas, caffeinate, rehydrate, and get the rest of the trip done, hopefully before 7 PM.

Traffic eased up the farther we got from New York City. We made one more stop to stretch at a rest area less than two hours from home. Google warned us of a construction delay about 40 miles from home, so we took the backroads from Lamar through Pleasant Gap and pulled in to our driveway just before 7.

We decided to try to go to bed at a normal time, so we unloaded the car, piled the laundry in our laundry room and the souvenirs, etc on the dining room table. Going through all that were chores for tomorrow. We went to Hi-Way Pizza, our local hangout, for some pizza and beer, then went home to unwind before hitting the hay at 10 PM, just over 24 hours since waking up in Kraków. It was good to hug the bed.