The Sun Princess arrived in Civitavecchia before we woke. We got up and dressed to have a quick breakfast before we had to be out of our stateroom by 8AM! Because they were running ahead getting people off the ship we left our waiting lounge by about 8:45 to hop on a bus to the Rome airport. This is a pretty drive through the country that took a little over an hour. We were very early for our flight to Frankfurt, so check-in was a breeze and we were able to relax in a lounge to wait for our flight. The fight was very full and was a few minutes late. Fortunately we had almost 2 hours to make our flight to Chicago. It was a long way from our arrival gate in the A Concourse to our departure gate Z-66 (they were as far apart as they sound). We also had to go through passport control to leave the European single passport region.
We knew our flight would be long, but it was a little longer than expected because there was a medical emergency just as we were approaching Iceland. We watch as they dropped fuel so we would not be too heavy to land and we landed at Keflavik airport. The airport looks like it is in the middle on nowhere or al least you can see it from there.
View from our window as we waited at Keflavik
The crew did a wonderful job and the person with the emergency was taken off, their bags unloaded, and we refueled in a little over an hour. By the time the new flight plan was filed, our delay was only an hour and 20 minutes. The rest of the flight was long, but uneventful, and in Chicago, we zipped through passport control because we have Global Entry. It is even faster and easier than the last time we traveled out of the country. Now they scan your face, and if the light goes green (which it did for both of us), you are handed a Global Entry exit card. You collect you bags, give the card to the agent at the exit, and you are back in the USA! Because we were going to arrive late in the evening, we had booked a car, and after I texted the driver, he met us at the door of the terminal in about 5 minutes. In about an hour we were home, and headed to bed as fast as we could go.
It was a great trip and the reason I never mentioned the weather was that it never rained the entire time we were traveling!
Until our next adventure!!
Bill & Linda