I tried to be as quiet as possible since David's ride to the airport was not scheduled until 6:45 am. I was not totally successful however since he showed up down in the lobby of the hotel at about 3:15 am with a bottle of vitamin D tablets I had left in the room.
My ride showed up early so we were off to the airport around 3:30 am. Getting to the airport was uneventful, arriving around 4:00 am. The airport terminal was a mad house, even at that time of day. The previous night, I had checked-in on-line even though I had already been assigned a seat. This allowed me to just get into the line to drop off my checked luggage. I was in that line for about 30 minutes. The one bag I wanted to check was overweight and the one bag I wanted to carry-on was also overweight. I was told I needed to go across the terminal to ticket sales and pay for the overweight before I could proceed. I did that (took about 30 minutes) and ended up paying 48,000 Ft (~$185). Luckily, I did not have to get back into the line to check my luggage. I just had to wave to the counter guy and he brought me up to the front and finished my checking. I ended up having to check both my main bag and the carry-on bag. This was to have ramifications in Frankfurt.
The security line looked much worse than it turned out to be. I now only had my backpack and I was through Security and off to the gate by 5:15 am. I had time to sit down and finish the half eaten chicken sandwich that I bought near our hotel at the Cafe De Paris Kft. in Vörösmarty Square the evening before.
The 90 minute flight to Frankfurt was uneventful and we arrived on schedule. My flight to IAH was scheduled to leave at 10:00 am and I had about 90 minutes to take care of the VAT refund and get to the gate. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had left all my VAT receipts in the carry-on bag that I ended up checking. Therefore, I will need to explore trying to get a refund via mail. The refund should total about $500.
The flight to IAH was aboard a Airbus A380-800 (a double decker) and was expected to take about 10.5 hours. While I was in Economy, Maxine had secured a bulkhead seat to help with leg room. I am sure it did help, but it was next to the galley and the noise and traffic from the Stewardess's in and out of the galley was disconcerting. The flight was nearly full and still uncomfortable. Departure was delayed about 30 minutes.
We arrived in IAH about 2:15 pm (9:15 pm Budapest time). I had made a list of my foreign purchases and was prepared to make a full disclosure and pay whatever duties were due. According to the CBP web site, I expected I might have to pay around $100. I went up to the Global Entry kiosk, scanned my passport and fingerprints. I filled out the disclosure form showing my over purchases including meat, cheese and spices. The resulting receipt had a big label on it stating I needed to go to the "luggage management" area. I had no idea where that area was, so I took the receipt to the CBP agent. He looked at the receipt and asked what I had bought. I handed him my handwritten list. He looked at it and asked if I had any alcohol, tobacco, fresh fruits or veggies? I said no and he just shrugged and said "have a nice day". So, I did not have to pay any duties and all my efforts to pay my fair share were for not.
I made my way to the luggage claim area. Luckily, my bags were NOT labeled "Priority" as apparently most were. "Priority" luggage came out on one carousel while everything else came out on a separate carousel. The carousel for "Priority" luggage was so jammed, that bags were falling off onto the floor. This was undoubtedly due to the number of "Priority" bags and that the very few people had yet to work their way through Customs to pick them up. I waited about 30 minutes and had my bags.
Laura and Stephen were waiting in the cell phone parking lot and were able to extract me from the pickup area quickly.
Getting to their home, I distributed my purchases. Stephen liked the beer stein, Laura selected the scarf she liked, Gavin graciously accepted the chocolate bars and Megan loved her new music box.
So ended the Euorpean River Cruise 2018 trip. This was my first river cruise and first experience with Tauck. Overall it was a great trip. David turned out to be a very good traveling companion. The weather was incredibly good with cool temperatures (but not cold) and sunny skies. Unfortunately, the rivers we traveled have been experiencing these "good" conditions all summer, without any rain, thereby creating our river level issues. We were led to believe that Tauck was going to start another cruise today but without the cruise, just motor coaching all the way. I would have been very disappointed if that had happened to us.
Lessons Learned:
- Tauck did a good job even though the river did not cooperate. I would have no reservations about using them again
- This river cruise was not relaxing, but closer to being exhausting. We covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of places (a new port every day)
- Luggage management continues to be an issue. I used most of what I brought, although I brought too many pairs of cargo shorts. For trips any longer than this, I believe a laundry day would be in order. This may well apply to our upcoming China trip.
- Things that worked well
- Small travel sized consumables, tooth paste, shaving cream, etc.
- Things I should have taken but did not
- Cold/allergy medications
- Cargo long pants
- Things I took that I DID NOT need
- Tennis shoes
- Slippers
- Power adapters not applicable to countries visited
- Second set of power adapters
- Second hat
- Third and fourth pair of cargo shorts
- Rain pants
- Second pair of black dress socks
- Will definitely investigate upgraded seats for future long-haul air flights.
- Keeping track of gifts purchased along the way is beneficial at the end of the trip
- Need to take medications for colds and allergies. I severely missed having some Benadryl and NyQuil type medications when I felt my cold developing
- Really need to work on my German for the upcoming December trip
- Need to take some snoring suppression strips
- I need to get an adapter (or find the one that came with the phone) for my iPhone X to I can plug in my headphones. It no longer has a separate port for headphones. I took my bluetooth headphones, but they are not noise suppressing and that is important on the air flights. UPDATE: I found the adapter that came with my iPhone X...it was in the iPhone box.
