And the return

We'll try to cover the story of our return.  We pretty well relaxed through to our Saturday departure.  With a Saturday afternoon flight out of Rome Fiumicino, we stayed in Umbertide until mid-morning, saying good-bye at our regular spots, with my longtime grocer friend Angelo offering us sandwiches for the road.

We hit the road, with one stop to eat the panini, another to fuel up, having used a little over half a tank of diesel on the whole trip.  I thought we were leaving pretty early, but we reached the airport at about the right time.  As I look over the still accessible SlowTrav page on returns at the airport, I see that the return locations have changed:  there were small signs saying which garage and floor are used by which companies.  I think Hertz was garage A, first floor, meaning one level up from the entrance.  We dealt with the return and took the elevator to level 2 to reach the overpasses to the terminals, still a fairly long way to Terminal 1.  Margaret sat there while I went to Terminal 2 to return our portable Wi-Fi device.

We asked for wheelchair assistance and gotten taken to the designated counter for Air Berlin check-in, handled by Alitalia staff.  We were spending the night in Düsseldorf and we could have asked for our bags to be checked through to the next day's flight to Boston, but we didn't plan for that and I was worried about the airline's reputation for handling luggage: better to have it in our control for the night.

We got to the gate, with concourses full of gleaming shops, and had a bit to wait with a late inbound.  We eventually got on with a half-hour delay, and had that flight to Düsseldorf.  We arrived at a gate with a jetway, and were helped to baggage claim, our bags turned up, and we went to the arrivals hall to be greeted by our friends Ben and Ellen.

Ben was an exchange student with my parents in 1988-89 in St. Louis; now he's an accomplished doctor and collector of my father's art. He and Ellen had visited us a few weeks prior and gave the news that they have a baby on the way.

We saw a bit of the city from the car on arrival, as we were taken to their apartment in the area of Land government buildings.  We saw their nice place and went to dinner at their "second home" restaurant down the street.  The owner wasn't there and things were botched in several ways, but we eventually got a nice dish of pork strips and spätzle.

On Sunday morning, Ben and Ellen put together a nice spread for a German breakfast, and we went for a walk along the Rhine.

  It was nice to see all that, and we got to the car for the drive to the busy airport.

We got to the designated counters for Air Berlin's USA flights, got checked in, and had some time to wait for a wheelchair attendant.  We were taken through exit passport control and security, with instructions to take electronics out.  There was an area at the end of the concourse for U.S.-bound flights, with extra security around.

Eventually it was time to board, for an on-time departure of Air Berlin's last flight to Boston.  There had been confusion about whether this was the flight, or the flight was discontinued as of today.  In a FlyerTalk discussion, I saw of another participant who was scheduled for the same flight, sent him a message while we were in the gate area, and he greeted us at our seats.  There were some people, I'll guess from connecting flights, who boarded close to departure time, then the pilot said we'll no longer wait to account for everyone: there may have been people who missed the last chance to get to Boston on AB.

The selection of movies on the seatback screens was reduced from the outbound flights.  We couldn't tell a lot about it being the last flight, but when I wondered whether the crew would go back as passengers on that night's return flight, Margaret asked a flight attendant, who said no, they'd return on a later date's Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.  This FA was working her last flight after 30 years.  The next day would bring the news that AB would end all long-haul service by Oct. 15, and likely shut down around Nov. 1.

We arrived in Boston and took our first advantage of Global Entry privileges, which we got at a lower price through the U.S.-Canada NEXUS program.  There was a group of kiosks, with a wait to get to one, where we had our passports scanned and fingerprints taken, and they printed a slip to clear us.  We went to baggage claim with a bit of a wait, but we were at the bus stop for our shuttle to our home area about 30 minutes after arrival.

The bus came a bit late, and we had the last stage of the long day's trip (but nice to have an afternoon departure from Düsseldorf, rather than starting from Rome in the early morning).  A good trip, without a lot of activity, but great to spend time in other home.