July 1, 2010 - We had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to start our journey home. Of course, our journey home had it's share of issues! We got lost driving to the airport. We all gave Tom a hard time because he did a practice run the day before to make sure he knew how to get there! We rushed to get checked in for our flight to Athens. We had all of our gifts and souvenirs with us in a carry on bag. We get to security and oops! We forgot the "no liquids" rule and they wouldn't let Tom take his bottle of Ouzo on the plane. He quickly ran to try to catch his luggage to put it in there, but the luggage was already gone. He gave the bottle of Ouzo to a very happy security guard BUT... there went Papa's gift.... bummer. Our flight to Athens was quick, we landed, grabbed our bags and checked them again for the flight to Philly. As we were checking the bags, we decided to buy another bottle of Ouzo, but because we had started the process of checking our bags, they would not let us put the bottle in the checked bags - don't you just love flying? We relaxed, had some breakfast using the last of our Euros and waited for our flight home.
As we were going through security for the flight out of Athens, we had our bags searched. The security guard found 3 bottles of Olive Oil lotion and threw them away - again, we forgot the "no liquids" rule and now we lost Grandma's gifts. After we boarded the plane, Julie had a small meltdown because #1 - we didn't think of the "no liquids" rule, #2 - security is SO mean #3 -we just threw away about 65 Euros, and #4 - we are now going home from our wonderful trip and we have no gifts for Papa and Grandma!!! The funny part of the story is after they took our lotion, a woman behind us was traveling alone and she had a bottle of pepper spray. Security was going to take it from her until she complained that she was traveling alone and it's her protection. SO, she could get on a plane with pepper spray that we all know can disable anyone, but we couldn't get on the plane with our bottles Olive Oil lotion! Perhaps if the airline didn't smash my luggage on the way to Athens and break the buckle and my curling iron, we wouldn't have felt the need to protect our gifts and carry them ourselves... ugh..
Our flight to Philly was long, long, long.... 10 1/2 hours. We passed the time, made it to Philly and waited for our flight to BWI. We had no problems getting through customs and it was nice to hear the Customs Agent say "Welcome back!" We spent an hour on the runway in Philly - 27th in line to take off, but we eventually made it home. 24 hours of traveling with 24 hours of daylight.... weird.
We pull into our driveway at home and guess what? We can't get in our house. We gave one friend a garage door opener so he could get in to remodel our bathroom and we gave another friend a garage door opener so he could repair our cars while we were away. We thought we could get in with the key pad entry, but the batter was dead. Who would have thought of that? Luckily we were able to get the garage door opener back and finally get in and go to bed!!!
A great trip full of memories that the Chalks will ALWAYS remember! :-)
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