theDIBB - Huxwolds European Vacation - AKA Auf Wiedersehen Bab

Huxwolds European Vacation - AKA Auf Wiedersehen Bab (Oct 18)
Day 6 – Coming Home (Sat 3rd Nov)

The Index is here
Day 5 is here

An early start today as we had an 6:55am flight – Rich and I got up with the alarm at 3:30am, letting Tom have an extra 15-minutes before we woke him up.

We put the last few bits and pieces into the case and were ready to leave the room at 4:10am. We’d paid for the room online when we booked but had to pay €4.60 tax on checkout.

We stopped to fill the car with petrol at a services that we’d spotted on the Autobahn yesterday (approx. €40, plus €12 for a some cigarettes and a bottle of Pepsi Max). We thought this was very reasonable, given that we’d driven 800k (500 miles) on our little road trip :grin:.

We’d been following Google Maps to the airport but couldn’t see any signs to get to where we needed to drop the car off. We managed to find the carpark we’d picked the car up from, but not the care hire level. So, we drove back around to the main airport roundabout, and this time saw the Drop-Off signs and followed them instead :grin:.

We parked the car up in the Avis row that we’d picked it up from at 4:45am, and took some photos as proof that we'd left it in good condition...

Tom and I left Rich with the luggage in the Terminal and walked down to Avis desk in the Car Hire Centre, which wasn’t manned and there was no sign of a drop-box for the key. I tried Googling to see if I could find any instructions, but struggled, so we went back to Rich, who had found a small note online saying it was in the drop off area.

This time we left Tom with the cases and walked back to the car to see if we could find the drop-box – we could see ones for all the other hire car companies, but not Avis :erm:. Time was starting to get on and we agreed if we couldn’t find it in the next few minutes, we’d take the key with us and post it back when we got home. We did one last walk up and down all the rows and eventually found it, just off to the left of where we had pulled into the car park. We also realised that this is where we should have left the car, so I walked back up to the car and moved it. We finally dropped the key into the drop-box at 5:30am :grin:.

We checked in our case and sat in the terminal to have a quick drink and some of the Brioche that we'd bought last night. Rich popped outside for a final cigarette and we went through to security, which was straightforward and quick – apart from the clear bags not being free. I didn’t have a €1 coin to buy one from the machine, but luckily found a bag in the side pocket of my handbag.

We had a mooch in Duty Free, getting 400 B&H (€62) and a bottle of Amarula Creme for Mom (€10.50)…

We headed for our gate (D20) – there was a 10-minute queue to get our passports checked on the way and our flight had started boarding by the time we got through...

There was still a queue for boarding, so we popped to the loo and I bought a Cappuccino (€3.90) and Coke for the boys to share (€3.30), then we sat down for a few minutes to let the queue go down. I was saving my Cappuccino to have on the plane, but wasn’t allowed to take it onboard, so I had to quickly drink about a 1/3 of it and throw it away :cry:...

We boarded at 6:40am, and the captain announced that we would have been ready to take off on time, but had to wait 10/15-minutes for some anti-freeze.

Rich watched some Netflix that he’d downloaded, and Tom went to sleep. I spent an hour writing up my notes from Thursday and Friday and the tried to get some sleep myself, but my neck was aching so I gave up after 20-minutes of trying and added a bit more detail into my trippie notes.

We landed in Manchester at 7:45am (UK time) and were through passport control in less than half an hour...

We got the shuttle back to the carpark and I think we were home by 11am.

Summary & Future Plans is here...