Day 15 - April 29, 2005: Home

The flight home went OK. Customs in Atlanta sucks, though. Because the international concourse is the very last one, and the furthest from the main terminal, you have to go through passport control, pick up your luggage, go through customs, re-check your luggage (unless you're connecting to somewhere else on Delta), then go through the metal detector lines. If a couple "heavies" come in at about the same time, that final security line can take an hour to get through. Anyway, we picked up our luggage, got to the car, and drove home. Everything was going well, until I opened the small suitcase and discovered that a bottle of Chianti broke and leaked onto my sneakers and Angela's white sweater. Damn! I will never put wine in checked luggage anymore. d'Oh!

It was an amazing trip. Can't wait til the next one. Angela's already trying to figure out where to go next year...

Day 14 - 28 April, 2005: Salzburg, Munich

Today was our final full day in Europe. It has been awesome being able to spend some "real" time over here; not feeling nearly so rushed as usual. Today we crossed the Alps at the Brenner Pass from Italy into Austria and took the autobahn over to Salzburg. While Angela wanted to find the eggs, I was looking forward to the cheese and bacon "crusted" pretzels at the stand in the square in front of the cathedral. We had some issues finding the egg shop, since our memory of its location from last year wasn't that great, but we did finally find it and were able to "restock" our supply of Christmas trinkets for this year's holiday. The store wasn't as impressive this time as last; not surprising. It was kind of fun to listen to the hushed whispers of amazement at the people who were seeing such a collection for the first time, though.

Our drive back to Munich went very smoothly. We dropped off our luggage at the now very familiar Munich Marriott and I went to get the trucklet washed up in preparation for its long voyage back to the USA. Since it was afterhours, there was noone to receive us at the dropoff point, so we just removed the "souvenirs" from the car (the first aid kit and front license plate) and proceeded to walk down the road to the subway stop, passing the offices of BMW M Gmbh.

For dinner, we "punted" and just ate at the "Champions" Sports Bar in the hotel. I had a very tasty cheeseburger, and Angela had some chicken tenders. It's a _very_ early morning tomorrow for our flight back home.