Europe Bound: Returning Home (i.e., to Boston)

But wait... I hadn't finished our Europe Bound story yet.

Traveling with a baby can be such a delight. Especially when she giggles so loudly during the worst bout of turbulence I myself had ever experienced, that the entire population on that plane found the ride a delight.

The long flight from Frankfurt to Boston took about 9 hours and went again surprisingly smooth. We had been afraid this one would be trouble, as it was not a night flight and in fact featured bright sunshine throughout. But our little one did her thing with the exemplary playing, the exemplary eating, and the exemplary sleeping. The passengers sitting in the seats in front of us hadn't even noticed we had a baby on our laps!

At the other end of that flight, though, we were about to step into an ordeal out of all of our controls. The baby backpack that we had requested to be there at our disembarking, was not there. That wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't kept us waiting for it for half an hour before they told us it had gone with the luggage. This meant that when we entered the immigration hall, we found ourselves at the end of a long, very long and slow line of non-US citizens.

Not having the backpack at our disposal, Amie was packed into my sling, but I didn't relish the prospect of carrying her increasingly fidgety frame for several hours.

Well, our dear daughter again saved us. She was born in the States and thus holds that wonderful American passport that we had so stupidly forgotten earlier. We asked an immigration officer if we could go in the much shorter, much faster US citizens queue. He smiled and let us through.

Yes, we had some disasters along the way, some large, others potentially dangerous, and some small. But our first long trip with the newest and smallest could certainly not have ended on a higher note!