Wednesday / Thursday 16 – 17 May 2012 – Depart States, arrive Stuttgart
We began our trip by throwing our bags in the car and driving to meet Robbie to take her up on her offer to drive us to the airport. We stashed the car at her house for the duration. She took us to the terminal and we arrived an hour and a half before the flight and had no trouble checking in. We each took one carry-on bag and a small handbag; camera bag for me.
The flight to Newark departed on time and we got to the terminal for our transatlantic flight in plenty of time. Lisa was already there, since she had taken a series of 3-hour hops over the course of two days in a friendly volunteer cropduster from her native South Dakota to get to Newark to meet us. As you might imagine, she was seriously chomping at the bit to get some real airplane food and a coach mid-row seat after that. We spent some time catching up with her, since we hadn’t seen her in several years, and then splurged for some grub at McDonalds – hopefully for the last time before returning home.
The flight to Stuttgart left the gate late due to a feeder flight arriving late. The remaining passengers embarked and we were on our way. The pilot announced that we would make up the lost time and arrive on-time, even though the flight from Newark to Stuttgart was mostly uphill. Remarkable magic, if you ask me. Turned out he was correct. We touched down about 10 minutes early, just before 0800 local time.
After negotiating our way through Customs, we arrived in the terminal where we easily spotted the 9′ tall Brian waiting for us in a pair of hot pink shorts and a blaze orange wife-beater. Hard to miss a thing like that, but he said he didn’t want us to miss seeing him and waste time looking around the airport trying to find him. He let us know that Cindy had caught her flight back from the States, but it brought her to Zurich instead of Stuttgart. Usually that’s the kind of thing that happens to luggage, but at least they got her to the right continent and she was able to take the train from Zurich and arrive later in the day.
We took the S-Bahn to Stuttgart and walked from the terminal toward Brian’s house, but started our food adventure on the way by stopping at a bakery deli for some sandwiches. We had salami sandwiches and water, but Lisa and Lynn got water with a lot more fizz than they liked. Seems the Europeans like their fizzy water.
We got to the house and set our bags down and visited with Brian for a while, and then decided to take a nap until it was time to meet Cindy at the train station. Lisa didn’t nap, so she and Brian visited until it was time to go. At that point, Lynn and I decided to remain in a napping posture while Brian and Lisa walked to meet Cindy, since we were still tired. They left at about 1245.
They returned with Cindy at about 1400 and we all visited for a while, and then Cindy had to go rest since she had not had any sleep in a good while either. While she napped, the rest of us went out into Kirchheim and walked around and found a place to have a beer or two. Then went back to the house, where we found Cindy still not ready to come out – a situation we are given to understand she made quite plain to Brian. We had a beer and talked for a while before deciding to go out for a döner for dinner.
Brian took us to a nearby döner place where we had very tasty döners and beer before coming back home. Cindy was still sleeping, and we decided to let her sleep until morning, since we had an early reveille for our train ride to Paris. We stayed up chatting for a while and then went to repack for the trip to Paris. I showered while Lynn got a head start on sleeping. Set the alarm for 0400 so we could take the S-bahn to the Stuttgart Hauptbanhof to catch the TGV (bullet train).
Continue here with Paris and Versailles