For a first, we sleep straight through the night. I don’t think I even moved.  Waking before the alarm, we have our coffee (yes, love being in an Americanized European hotel – kettles and instant coffee, always, thank you), then hit the gym – which is right next to our room, but not accessible that way.  We have to walk all the way around the Garden Inn, figure out how to access the Hilton and then walk around again to the gym.  Seriously, we walked in one big circle.  Exercise won’t hurt us!  (Even still, it is pretty weird and stupid.)

Gym complete, showers done, suitcases packed, we head off on our mile long walk back to the terminal, check in our bags then go off in search of the LuxxLounge for which our Priority pass allows entry.  We’ve not been here before since it is airside and outside security.  We’ve only flown connections out of Frankfurt and haven’t wanted to change going outside security and passport control for a lounge.  Probably a good decision in the past because this lounge is the pits.  In a word.  Crowded. Hot. Little to no food (seriously, picked over pastries and charcuterie – and that’s about it), no one cleans up – at least not for about 45 minutes, then a woman comes by to pick up plates. The passengers are jerks, one guy is sleeping on a bench booth seat taking up 4 table places.  It is so not worth it at all, but we are here, and it is our breakfast. The only cool things are the hard boiled eggs which are all painted/stained like easter eggs.

Eh, we make do, we eat, then we skedaddle to the gate, whip through security, have a little heart failure at passport control – the ship never had our passports stamped after Brazil.  What?  So no EU stamp?  How does that happen?  The Frankfurt guys were perplexed.  They paged through every page of both our passports and kept questioning us on how long we were in Germany, from where we came, etc.  We explained everything, the cruise, Brazil (the last stamp we have) and that we disembarked in Lisbon.  Finally they just stamped the passport and let us go. Wonder how many people that happened to?

Onto the gate, we patiently wait for the flight, lining up when told, then boarding our almost empty flight back to the U.S. of A.  Since it is so empty, boarding is fast, we’re all settled in, take off on time and sit back and enjoy our 8 hour ride to Chicago.

Beautiful scenery as we take off.  Incredibly good lunch of grilled chicken with a lovely mustard cream sauce, and then movies for Ed, Blog for Cathy.  Mid-flight snacks with wine and beer, then another “snack” of pesto chicken pizza – I couldn’t find any chicken, but the crust (which was rolled in a very creative way) was actually really good if you scraped most of the pesto off.  Salad was frozen – seriously frozen – but it made it really easy to pick off the pepper strips and the cucumbers.  LOL.

Landing right on time, we scoot through Global Entry – that mobile app for GE is the best – then to baggage claim where our bags come out really quickly.  Hoping we can recheck our bags, we quickly grab the beer and wine out of them and head off to United to recheck for our AVL flight in the morning.  Or not.  Once again, it is too early to check the darn bags, and the sweet agent tells us even if she could, we really don’t want our bags in the system that long.  Ok, good to know for future trips.  So, off we go, dragging our bags to the taxi rank to take a super expensive taxi ($27 for a 10 minute ride) to the hotel – using our GPS because the driver (who we can barely understand) doesn’t know where the hotel is and tells us to use our GPS to help – “do I turn right or left?”  That’s a first! 

Hotel is great – very European, a new Holiday Inn brand.  We can’t figure out with whom they want to compete.  In Europe, maybe.  In the States?  Don’t know.  But for us it is perfect – large room, 2 huge comfy beds, nice bathroom, coffee all day downstairs, a gym with 2 treadmills and within walking distance to a 7-11 (for cold beer and more wine – the vinho verde was great just a little too carbonated for me anymore) and the Chili’s across the main road.  What more could we want? Ok, well, tapas and canas and 2 euro wine….but…that’s done now.  ☹

Shopping and exercising complete, we successfully navigate our way across the train tracks (just as a train is coming) and the 6 lane almost highway to get to Chili’s where we have a decent snack meal – southwest eggrolls and boneless chicken wings.  We’re about done with food at this point!  Then it is back across the highway – easier this time because there is a huge freight train coming through the intersection and most of the traffic is stopped – and onto our room and Law and Order and falling asleep way too early, but our body time is 2 or 3am – what can you do?