05/15/2025 – Home Sweet Home
We had dropped off the rental car yesterday to avoid having to deal with it before our morning flight. Especially since the car had to be returned at Terminal 2, while our flight left out of Terminal 1. It was a good decision. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza hotel near the airport and they had free shuttles to/from the airport. We dropped off the car at Terminal 2, and took a shuttle back. Then in the morning, we took the shuttle to Terminal 1. We took a nice walk around the area before having a small dinner at the hotel bar. Then we went to our room to get ready for tomorrow. Easy, peasy. Except – when Dave plugged in his phone to the power strip he brought and – Zaaap! – there was a spark, some smoke, and the room went completely dark! The hotel staff came quickly when we called and found the circuit breaker that was tripped down the hall somewhere. Time to buy a new phone charger!
The first flight from Milan to Newark went fairly well, until we got to NY. The weather was not favorable, so we had to circle the airport for half an hour. We still had plenty of time to catch our second flight. Our second flight was about 40 minutes late leaving Newark for Washington, and we only had a 55 minute layover. In addition, we had to take a train from Terminal D to Terminal A! We were seated next to a United Air pilot who was deadheading to Washington. He was very helpful, as well as entertaining, and gave us some good tips for catching our final flight to Buffalo. Fortunately, even though we left very late, we only arrived a few minutes later than scheduled. With only a slightly mad dash, we made our flight and got home relatively unscathed.
We look forward to our next trip.