“Home Sweet Home”

“The Thrill of Coming Home has Never Changed”

“Traveling is so much better when you know you have a wonderful home to go back to”

Who writes that nonsense? Yes, we are back home safe and sound. It was a long day, just a little bit stressful, but ultimately everything worked out fine.

We started out with a quick shuttle ride from the hotel to Malpensa airport. Check-in was easy and since we had some time, we were able to enjoy the Lufthansa Lounge for an hour. It was much more comfortable than sitting at the gate. Sue was able to have a nice cup of tea and some yogurt, while I munched on a few cookies.

My phone popped up a text – Flight delayed by 15 minutes. Ruh-roh!

We only have 55 minutes between connections, so that’s not what I wanted to see. Once up in the air, the head steward said they’ll pass along connection info before we land. They usually stop boarding about 20 minutes prior to take-off, so I was getting a little worried. Maybe we’ll be at the next gate.

Our plane will be landing at gate A66, our connection is at E19. They tell us there is a tram we take to get to the gate, that should help. There is the tram, we’re off and making good time. Passport Control – what ?!?

We practically sprint through the line and they stamp us out quickly. Whew! E19… of course it’s one of the last gates. We see another line ahead, but there’s a business class aisle that’s short. As we go through, Sue gets pulled over for a random security check. Five minutes feels like an hour, but out she comes. We run down to the gate and they are waiting for us. Swiss Air held up the flight because there were a few others that must have been on our flight.

We get on and we get into our seats for the flight to JFK. The Swiss Air business class is nice. The seats are comfortable and they fold down flat for sleeping. The food was really good and the portions were plentiful. The flights attendants were all very professional, but also very friendly. We would definitely fly with them again.

The flight to JFK is uneventful and the pilot was able to make up the delayed time and then some, as we arrived about fifteen minutes early. We make the trek to Passsport and Customs and whip out our Global Entry cards. It only takes us about five minutes to get through passport control. Global entry is money well spent.

Next stop is baggage claim, once we’re through here we’re good…

One hour later, we’re still in baggage claim. Good old JFK. Seems that our flight’s baggage is on the same carousel as the bags from an Emirates A380 flight. Think BIG plane with lots of people and lots of bags.

Once we finally got our bags, we had to scramble to get to the Air Train to get to Terminal 5. Once there, we check our bags, head through security and find our gate – all is calm again!

The good news is our flight is on-time, again uneventful and soon we landed in sunny Buffalo.

It only took about five minutes before we slid into a taxi for the ride home. Twenty minutes later – Home Sweet Home!

Auf Wiedersehen! Au Revoir! Arrivederci! Goodbye!

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Thanks for following along. It was fun sharing our journey and pictures with you.

I’m going to post one more entry once we get settled in to provide some tips for others who may be venturing to Switzerland.