Note that I didn't call it the end of The Odyssey, for I plan to post more adventures as they come up. Just don't expect them to occur as regularly as they did when we were traveling around Italy.
The trip home WAS something of an ordeal, as Jay and I got on a charter bus to take seven of the students (AND my colleague Herr Professor Doctor Michael Nitsche) to Marco Polo (the Venice Airport) for our trip home. Even though our flight wasn't supposed to leave until noon, we had to leave the hotel at 5:30 AM because two students had 10 AM tickets. Once we got to the airport there was some drama because of a threatened strike, but all flights took off more or less according to schedule.
After hanging out in the airport for several hours with three students (one of whom had the same flight as us) and drinking our last cups of good Italian coffee, we got on the plane and had a totally uneventful flight into JFK. In fact, the only (small) drama was that the captain hit the tarmac just a bit too fast.
We knew we had a three-hour layover at JFK, which included the thrill of going through customs. Far less drama than the last time we returned from Italy and Romania when the TSA staff was totally rude and surly and told us that we had to throw away the bottle of Lemoncello we had purchased for Andy. (We didn't, but THAT's another story) At least this time they let people know right from the beginning that they had to check any wine they had purchased at the Venice Airport rather than wait until their luggage had already gone to the plane.
Because of thunderstorms in Atlanta, the three-hour layover turned into a five-hour layover. As a result, we arrived home at 1:30 AM, or 24 hours after leaving Italy.
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