Tucson, AZ
Nov. 23
Ah, yes, home again. We both love to go, but we both love to come home as well.
Nov. 21
We were up and off the ship by 6:00 a.m. It was cold and windy when we disembarked and headed for the bus that would take us to Rome from CIVITAVECCHIA, which is the sea port for Rome and about 70 miles from the airport.
Arriving at the airport with piles of luggage, very little sleep and hoards of people. UGH! Finally got checked in for our flight, got our luggage checked in and up we go to wait for our flight for 3 hours. Suzi and I checked out the shops around the gate, like Valentino, Gucci, etc...you get the idea. We had some Euro's to spend, however, not enough to spend in those shops! I wound up bringing some Euro's home...figured they could be seed money to return to Venice and Naples someday!
While waiting for our flight a family arrived with eight children for our flight. We all groaned, way too many kids! As it turned out , this was a Navy family, and those eight children were the best behaved children we have ever seen. The oldest was 17 and the youngest was 1, and they all helped each other (well, with the exception of the baby). What a neat family.
Flight to Chicago was uneventful, just a very long 10 hours. Arriving in Chicago we had to walk a long distance from the plane to the U.S. Customs/Immigration area. Al finally said he couldn't walk any further, so we found a cart to take us the rest of the way. I am sure Jack and Suzi were getting tired of waiting for us! We all cleared customs with ease, boarded the tram to the domestic terminal and found our selves with very little time to get to our next gate. The lines for security were LONG, however, with Al in a wheelchair, we were put at the front of the line and after clearing security we raced for our flight. I decided in the middle of the race to have an asthma attack....now, I have had exactly one of these before in my life and decided at that point I never wanted one again! Well, the asthma demons were after me....I could barely breath as we raced for our flight. Once I got on the plane I was gasping for air, but after calming down for a while the attack seemed to abate and I slept the entire flight from Chicago to Phoenix. And I must say, O'Hare was a nightmare on Wednesday, and especially since snow was expected and it was sleeting while we were there.
Upon arriving in Phoenix we claimed our luggage (except for one piece of Jack and Suzi's which decided to go home with someone else -- someone picked up their garment bag by mistake, which was corrected and returned later that night). So all in all, we all felt very lucky that we were 1. in Phoenix instead of missing our flight in Chicago; 2. Had all of our luggage and 3. it was warm in Phoenix. All four of us were tired (well, except for Suzi, she slept most of the way from Rome to Chicago) and somewhat hungry. After checking in at the hotel we went out to find something to eat....now, I have to tell you Denny's is not my restaurant of choice, but that is the first one we found that night and decided that since they were open we were going to eat there and then call it a night.
Nov. 22
Al and I are up at 5:30 a.m.......still on Italy time I guess. We decided since we weren't able to sleep to head home. We left Jack and Suzi a note and headed for Tucson. We got home about 10:00 Thanksgiving morning. Dick and Lano had came over the day before so we were greeted with 3 dogs (our two and their one) and two cats....all trying to tell us about their two weeks at once! I do believe the cats had more to say than the dogs. We lazed around all day yesterday just trying to stay awake. We are doing our Thanksgiving on Saturday, so we cooked a beef roast and called it a day. Al and I were in bed by 8:30 p.m.!
Nov. 23
Up today and raring to go. Al and Dick took off to do some running around looking for ammo and Al went to pick up his new gun that he won last month. Lano and I did some shopping and a Costco run. We just knew Costco would be a madhouse, however, we were very surprised to find that it wasn't. I think everyone was at the mall today.
So we are home from our wonderful cruise and trying to recover so we can go again in April. We had a great time, saw a lot and still trying to absorb it all. I will get to the pictures hopefully sometime this next week and post a few for the blog.
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Day and are lots of turkey! Triptofan will visit us tomorrow!
Until next time..............we hope you are all happy and healthy.
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