Addio all'Italia!

Our Final Morning in Italy

It seems like for most of our trips we always have an early-morning flight, leading to a short night of sleep. Not so in this case.  We were reversing our original itinerary on the flight back, flying from Naples up to Munich, and then connecting for our onward to Dulles.  Our flight to Munich didn't depart until 1:15pm, so we did not have to rush in the morning. The two other couples who were departing the tour in Sorrento had such early flights, and their airport transfers were very early.  One couple got picked up at 4:50am, and the other at 6:30am.  Our self-booked transfer wasn't until 9:30, so we had time to enjoy breakfast at a leisurely pace. The rest of our tour left at 8:00am, so we waited to go down until they had gone.  We'd said all of our good-byes the previous night, and did not want to be source of slowing down the group with yet more farewells.  It gave us time, too, to finish watching the presidential debate, which we'd started to watch the previous night.

On paper, the trip from Sorrento to the airport in Naples should only take about 30 minutes, but having witnessed the traffic at times, I was skeptical.  Our driver showed up early, which was fine, so we loaded up, departed, and promptly got stuck in traffic. I fired up Waze on my phone and immediately saw that there were two accidents just within Sorrento proper, which had thoroughly confounded traffic, as there are no real alternative routes. I wasn't worried, yet, about the delay, but in the end, it took more than 90 minutes to reach the airport.

As we'd seen in Milan, Italy needs to invest some money in their airports.  The Naples airport was small from the outside, and quite dated.  It seemed obvious that the airport was not equipped to deal with all the new crowds generated by the influx of low-cost carriers now flying there.  We headed toward the Lufthansa check-in and encountered a huge line.  Upon closer inspection, however, we realized it was for a different airline, but the airport had so little room, and the line could not be directed elsewhere.  We pushed our way through and straight up to check-in, which was a painless affair.  We'd packed all of wine and booty, along with our now smelly clothes, into the three bags and everything went through without a hitch.  We even had about an hour to kill in the lounge before they announced boarding.

We only had a 75-minute layover in Munich, which would be fine, if we were on time.  The fact that our flight was announced as boarding right on time was a good sign.  We made our way to the gate, got in line, saw the sign announcing boarding, but when I looked out onto the tarmac, there was no plane.  I fired up my phone and saw that the incoming flight from Munich had not even arrived.  Why exactly they announced boarding for a plane that was still in the air is still beyond me. I fought my inner demons and tried not to get anxious about our connection, but it was a challenge.  The plane pulled up to the gate about 10 minutes later, and they deboarded via stairs, even though there was a jetway right there. As they were still getting off, they began to let us through the check-in gate.  We went through, but then stood on the other side, still with no place to go.  About 15 minutes after that, they let us walk out onto the jetway, but then we just stood for another 10 minutes or so, with nowhere to go.  It was all very odd, and the Lufthansa app still showed us departing on time, even though we'd already blown past our departure time.

We did eventually board, and we ended up leaving about 40 minutes late, but either by creative padding of the schedule or favorable winds, we ended up only being 25 minutes late into Munich.  We arrived, of course, at the last physical gate, with meant we'd be walking for a while.  We had to clear immigration and another security check, too, so we'll just say that our pace was brisk through the airport.  We approached our ultimate departure gate about five minutes before boarding, but in the final checkpoint, Katherine was notified that she was flagged for a random security check.  I was carrying all of our bags at this point, so she had nothing on her, but they still took their time checking her out.  Nonetheless, boarding was delayed about 15 minutes, so we had plenty of time and pretty much walked right onto the plane. We had the exact same seats on the plane as we had on the flight over.   The flight itself was very pleasant, and Katherine slept for a good chunk of it.

Our plane from Naples to Munich FINALLY Arrives

Bay of Naples, and Island of Capri, as we departed

Our flight from Munich to Dulles

Oktoberfest-themed Flight

We arrived into Dulles a little before 8:00pm but we breezed through immigration -- the new facial recognition for Global Entry worked like a charm, and we literally walked through without even slowing down.  Unlike before, all three of our bags arrived, and were in fact some of the first to arrive.  I had the Uber ordered the minute the last bag arrived, and by the time we walked out to the pick-up area, our driver was pulling up. It was seamless, and we were home in under 15 minutes.  Chip was, needless to say, very happy to see us.  We have a new dogsitter who took care of him while we were gone, but he was nonetheless over-the-moon happy to have his people home.  The late arrival was helpful, in that we went straight to bed, so it was a noneventful return from an amazing memory-filled trip.