Home Sweet Home

One final post about our first trip to Kazakhstan.

So we went back to the Hotel Almaty for a short while after our expensive dinner at the coffee shop. We were to be picked up at midnight to head back to the airport for our 3:15am flight to Frankfurt. The Almaty translator (Kate) was a little late due to the high volume of traffic in town that weekend. Maybe you knew this, but England's national soccer team (featuring David Beckham) was in Almaty to play Kazakhstan. England prevailed 4-0. Kate said that there were something like 60 private planes that had flown in filled with rich soccer fans and then of course the regular planes had been jampacked with soccer fans, too. Our flight out had many drunken English soccer fans that were on their way back to London. Anyway, Kate was a little late picking us up.

We found out on the way back to the airport that we had to pay $75 each way for the transfer to the hotel and back to the airport. Add this to the $140 for the room and the $36 paninis, and our layover in Almaty cost over $320. I wish we had known in advance what this stuff was going to cost, because we would have happily taken a nap in their small airport and eaten candy bars and chips for dinner to save that money. Live and learn.

We left Almaty without a hitch for our red-eye to Frankfurt. We were both able to sleep some on the flight, so it wasn't too bad of a flight. We arrived at 6am in Frankfurt and our layover was a fairly short two hours. The flight to Chicago was the bad one...such a long time to be stuck on a plane. And I know that I personally had a hard time sleeping. You know it's bad when you willingly watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop (although The International wasn't too bad). Jenny enjoyed Confessions of a Shopaholic and Last Chance Harvey instead.

Our layover in Chicago was a quick two and a half hours, but our plane sat on the tarmac (refueling, they said) and we left almost an hour late. Kinda tough to make up that time in the air when the flight itself is only scheduled to be 74 minutes long. Anyway, a big thank you to the Niemillers for picking us up at the airport and we were finally home! LaRosa's for dinner and then we were off to bed early. Yay!

We will likely post again once we receive our court date. At that time we will know when we will be returning to Kazakhstan to bring Max home!