What a day. We woke up at 4:00 am. Got ready to leave with all of our bags packed. We cleaned out the fridge and had our cinnamon and chocolate rolls for breakfast. We started taking our bags down around 5:45 and our taxi's were there before 6:00. I waited in the apartment for them to show up to check us out and return our deposit, which she did right at 6:00. I ran down and jumped in the taxi and we were off to the Budapest airport. We walked in and thought oh crap. We saw a huge line to check in but luckily that was for a different airline. It is not as easy to tell which line is for which airline as you have to find the name on an electronic sign above. Not like at home where the airline is plastered on the back wall. These are all generic and they open up whatever counters they want at the time they are checking people in. Well we got checked in with no problem. The security line was very minimal and what was nice is you didn't have to take your shoes off, unless you were like Fred and could not go through the scan thing due to his pacemaker. Or you were like Roger who didn't notice no one else was taking their shoes off and did it out of habit. Well once we were through security we started SHOPPING!!! Ok if you know us at all you know that we collect alcohol. So there were some specialties that we wanted to take home with us so we bought them at the Duty Free shop which was cheaper than in town since they were also on sale. So then we headed to our gate but first we had to pass through another security check point and show them our passport, which I liked because they added another stamp to my passport. We were the first people in our gate area which we thought was weird since there was less than an hour before our flight. Well then we started looking at how much Hungarian currency we had left. So again we went shopping since if we returned the money to the bank you do not get a good rate we figured we might as well spend it.
We all flew the same flight on British Airways from Budapest to London Heathrow airport. We appreciated the fact that they not only gave us a drink they also fed us a salami sandwich. I was very fortunate as to have the window seat on the right side of the plane so as they were circling to land I had wonderful views of London. I only wish I could have found my camera to take some aerial shots but I was too caught up in the moment. Once we reached London that is where we parted company with Elaine & Fred. They had a little earlier flight on British to Dallas and we were flying American. I have to say on international flights they don't let you go hungry,s they even fed us a pizza just before we landed. Now this is were we had the worst time. We landed in Dallas and new we had to go through customs which we had our paper work filled out and were ready for. What we were not ready for was the two hours it would take us to get through the customs line, picking up our bags and waiting in another line to give our documents and drop off our bags. This is when I was glad that American had changed our flight time. We did sleep on our flight from Dallas to Fresno since it was finally dark. So when we got home we were awake. This is the first time I have come home and right away unpacked. I had everything from my suitcase unpacked and put away, took a shower and was finally able to go to sleep around 2:30 am. So lets just say it was a very long day but we are grateful that we made it home safe and sound.
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