The rest of us enjoyed our last Parisian breakfast at Carol's before getting on the Metro and RER.
I had checked in online last night, but Lufthansa wouldn't let me create boarding passes for Beth, so we tried the check-in kiosk as instructed. Even with the help of a Lufthansa employee, we couldn't get hers to print, so he sent us to the check in desk. Since we didn't have any luggage to check, he very kindly slipped us past the long line to a shorter one so the agent could print our passes.
At security, they were very thorough. Beth and I both set off the detectors (no idea why--I wasn't wearing either a belt or a hairclip), so we both got patted down. Matt and Beth both had their packs inspected by hand. Matt had forgotten the liter bottle of water in his pack (he had wondered why his bag was so heavy!), and we never did figure out what they saw in Beth's.
Our first flight was a short hop to Munich, and they fed us a half sandwich for a snack (tough ham/bacon, pickles, and tons of mayo on dark bread). We didn't have much time in Munich--by the time we got through passport control, our flight to Chicago was already boarding.
The Chicago flight was long. Beth watched FIVE movies on the video screen. For dinner, they were out of chicken by the time they got to our row, so we all had pasta with cream sauce and a dab each of pesto and red sauce, a roll, Camembert, butter, a wilted salad, and a tasty dessert (cake with a key-lime pie topping). This was followed a few hours later by a turkey calzone snack.
I took a few catnaps during this leg, but was mostly awake, catching up on my reading (GoodReader and Kindle for iPhone).
We walked a long way in Chicago. And waited in several long lines. First was immigration--the line didn't move at all for a long time, then finally started snaking along. No baggage to pick up or recheck, and the customs line was short.
We took the train to Terminal 1, and wound our way through security (no special treatment this time), then headed to our gate, which was very conveniently located across from McDonalds. We had Big Macs (Matt and me), McNuggets (Beth), fries, sodas (Beth and me), and a Starbucks frappacino (Matt).
Our flight left an hour and twenty minutes late, and was packed, with dozens of people on the standby list. We mostly slept on the last leg of the flight. Beth and I tried to lean against each other, and Matt somehow folded himself into his seat:
He was rather hard to wake up when we landed, but I finally got him upright with both his carryon and his tote bag, and walked him off the plane.
We are now in the car on the way to John's parents' house. Thank you Pete and Nikki for picking us up in the middle of the night!
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