It’s all over but the shoutin’!
The sun rises on our final day in Italy.
So now we return to reality, to jobs and responsibilities and families. But the memories of our trip will go on forever.
Just a few words about getting home from long, overseas trips, though.
When planning a trip like this, one of the things to remember is that you need to allow plenty of time between flights when returning, because of going through customs.
Our flight from Rome to Dulles in Washington, D.C. was all during daylight hours, which made catching some shut-eye more difficult. Luckily, the return trip didn’t seem quite as long as the trip going to Rome.
Once we arrived at Dulles, we headed for the customs check-in. What we hadn’t planned on was the VERY LONG wait there. The room was divided into returning U.S. citizens and entering non-U.S. citizens. The first line was so long, we waited almost 90 minutes to step up to the customs agent’s kiosk, where we were waved right through as soon as we showed our passports.
Six happy travelers, from the U.S. to Italy and back.
They were short-handed that day, so only half of the agents were available and only one in four to five passports were checked at length.
From there, we headed to baggage claim, where we reclaimed our luggage (Yea! It was all there and together!) and entered another line. This line eventually brought us to another customs checkpoint where we put our bags on the carousel to be loaded for our next flight.
We then headed to our gate to catch our flight from Dulles to Oklahoma City, and there were no hitches from there on.
Once we arrived in OKC, we loaded up and were driven back home by an airport shuttle. This is definitely the way to go. No one had to retrieve a car from the parking lot, had to try to figure out how to get all the luggage in the trunk of the car, had to think about driving. Door to door service after being gone for 18 days was great!
There’s lots more to tell about, so even though this trip is over, there will be more blogging as I “travel along.”
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Comments
Re: long immigration/customs lines
the best thing to do to avoid the immigration lines is to sign up for the Global Entry Trusted Traveler Program. It was the best thing I ever did. Recently returned from Chile through DFW. Long immigration lines. I had my own special immigration kiosk. The process took 60 seconds and I was through. the machine gave me a printed receipt I handed my receipt to a specially designated customs officer in the customs area which took exactly 5 seconds and I was done. My fellow passengers are probably still standing in line.
It takes on on-line application plus $100 fee. After you receive conditional approval, you go to the nearest U.S. entry airport, in this case DFW, and submit to a 30-60 min in person interview with an agent. If you are approved, you are told on the spot.
If a person has felonies or customs violations, or if they are the type of person that doesn’t want to give the gov’t any info, they shouldn’t waste their time with the process. They will probably never get approved.
Welcome home, Marcy! Someday I hope to cross the Atlantic and see some of these sites myself. Someday…