07Oct – Adieu, Cleveland

Tschüss, Cleveland! And away we go!

Or , at least, we WILL be on our way in just two hours.

At this writing, Rob & I are sitting in the United Lounge, sipping complimentary glasses of wine (Prosecco for me, chardonnay for Rob) before heading to the gate. Prost!

We were amazed by the hassle-free, no-lines check-in at the airport today. The only hindrances we encountered were technical and escalated by human impatience: boarding passes and lounge passes were not loading quick enough for an instant gratification society.

We’ve just had a quick visit from Peg here in the lounge, ostensively to let us know that she’s arrived. She was allowed temporary ingress into the inner sanctum by the front desk, who recognized our names from our initial difficulties getting in. However, despite our encouragement to do otherwise, she chose to follow the rules rather than chance a public expulsion and departed the lounge after a short but lively conversational exchange as we continued to bask in the lap of airport luxury.

So the plan is this: we leave Cleveland for Washington Dulles Airport just after 3 PM. Upon arrival, we need to hustle ourselves down the concourse–fortunately the same one as our arrival–because we have just one hour from our landing to our take-off for Frankfurt, Germany…and tomorrow! Arriving in Deutschland and clearing Customs, we have a couple of hours to kill before boarding the 45-minute hop to Basel, Switzerland where we meet our GCT representative and are escorted to the M/S Harmony, our floating home-sweet-home for the next two weeks. Fingers are crossed. 🤞

Later, MDR.