Especially since we also bought four round-trip tickets from Rome to Venice.
While I was able to book the same flight to Rome as the rest of the family, I was not able to take the full flight back to Ottawa with them. The girls were flying from Rome to Frankfurt, Germany, and then on to Ottawa; I had to fly from Rome to Munich, change flights, and fly to Frankfurt, where I would join my family for the final leg.
When I bought my tickets, though, I noticed that there was only a one-hour layover in Munich. I called the airline to confirm this connection and was told, curtly, that if it wasn't possible, they wouldn't have offered it.
If, for any reason, my Rome flight was delayed and I missed my connection, the airline would get me home as soon as they could. Likely within 24 hours. Fourty-eight hours at the most.
Fourty-eight hours in Munich, during Oktoberfest, didn't sound so bad to me.
Though my family didn't have to leave Rome as early as I did, we arrived at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport together. As soon as I checked in and got my boarding pass, we took the kids to get breakfast: muffins and juice for them; muffins and coffee for DW and me.
When it was time for me to head through security and make my way to my gate, the kids held onto me, not wanting me to go. "I'll see you soon, in Germany," I assured them. To DW, I said, "No matter what, get on the plane in Frankfurt. Don't wait for me. If you miss your flight, you won't get compensated."
We all hugged, and I headed on.
Once on the plane, I kept checking my watch. We sat at the gate, even as our departure time came and went. I'm not going to make it, I convinced myself. I'll be spending my time in Munich. While it didn't sound so bad, I worried about how the kids would respond when they discovered their dad wasn't joining them in Frankfurt.
Thirty minutes after our scheduled departure time, we finally took off. The entire flight took place under clear skies, and I marvelled as we flew over the Swiss Alps, seeing the small roads and houses up in the mountains. But I was still worried, constantly checking my watch, wondering if I would see my connecting flight take off as we were in our final approach.
When a flight attendant offered me a drink, I showed her my boarding pass for my next flight, and asked her if there was any way for her to determine the gate where we were arriving. I had to get to gate 13, and would like to know how far we would be. She gave me a drink and told me that she'd get and answer for me after she finished service.
We were arriving at gate 13. "We will depart our plane on the tarmac and take a shuttle bus to the gate. You just need to go through the doors, but where most people will go straight, you'll go up a flight of stairs and turn right. The gate will be right there."
I was relieved, but still didn't think I'd arrive in time. I grabbed the in-flight magazine and flipped through the pages, looking to see if there was any information about the Munich airport. Instead, I found something different: an article listed the top 10 airports in the world, and the number one airport was bestowed upon Munich. Its efficiency, cleanliness, and ease of navigating made it the airport to be.
I was starting to relax.
As we approached the Munich airport, the plane banked and I could look straight down, onto a festival ground. It was, most likely, the Oktoberfest grounds. I looked at my watch and saw that we were 10 minutes late in arriving, and we hadn't yet landed. It was going to be tight.
While I just might make my flight, I thought, one thing was certain: my luggage wouldn't.
We landed and came to a stop. For what seemed like ages, we waited before anybody started heading forward. As I moved up the aisles, I could see ground crew furiously unloading the plane. "There's no way," I muttered to myself.
On the bus, we stayed still for five minutes after the doors were closed. Once again, I convinced myself that I had missed my flight. But as we finally rolled up to gate 13, I could see a plane still in place, the gangway still attached. I was going to make it.
I had stood near the doors of the shuttle bus, and as soon as the doors opened, I sprung out and made a dash for the doors. I ran up the stairs, turned right, and joined the end of a dwindling line that was still passing through the gate.
I made it.
Our plane left the terminal at precisely the schedule time of departure. It seemed as though I had enough time to put my camera bag in the overhead compartment, sit down, and buckle up before we started moving.
My family was going to be relieved.
While the Munich airport was efficient, Frankfurt seemed less so. I passed through throngs of people, passing through two sets of security, and seemed to walk forever, before I made it to my gate. The woman who let me through complained that I seemed to have left getting there to the last minute. "Are you kidding?" I replied. "I got here as quickly as I could!"
Already, people were boarding the flight to Ottawa. I couldn't see my family. Had they already boarded? My section had already been called for boarding but I hung back. I knew I'd have to get on this plane, but not seeing my family made me want to keep an eye out for them.
It wasn't until there was only a handful of people left to board, and the crew at the gate were beckoning for me to come forward, that I saw my girls running toward the gate. As with my flight out of Rome, their flight had also been delayed. The smile on the faces of my kids, as they saw that I had made it to Frankfurt, made the earlier prospect of staying in Munich through Oktoberfest seem ridiculous.
Back in Ottawa, we stood at the luggage turnstile, waiting for my family's luggage to arrive. I was amazed to see my own suitcase come down the conveyor belt. Not only had I caught my connecting flight in Munich and Frankfurt, so had my baggage. All of us and everything was home, safe and sound.
My family and I have done a lot of travelling since our 2009 trip to Italy, but this vacation still goes down as my all-time favourite. With my eldest daughter now away at college and my youngest one in her final year of high school, I often wonder if we'll ever take such a vacation together again. Indeed, with the pandemic still a threat and this year's European vacation cancelled, what are vacations going to be like in the future?
There's so much more of the world that I want to see, so I'm not going to give up.
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