Whew! We made it!

 There were no hiccups with any of the flights: Abq to Chicago to Zurich to Budapest. We spent our layovers wondering which couples might be on our boat and what conversations we might have.

Chicago airport is something else again. We had a 4 hour layover, and were not concerned about time. At all. Even with a terminal change and a dinner plan. Ev was frothing to eat at a Rick Bayless restaurant called Torta Frontera. He got our lovely stewardess hyped to go on her break and was pretty much touting it to every best friend he made in the airplane and at the airport. 

Aaaall before we ate there. 

It was bad. So bad, didn't get a picture. Oh well, sorry new friends. 

We landed in Terminal 2, walked to Terminal 3 to try to meet  Robert and Joy and get them to go with us to Torta. Once we saw the teeming masses, we abandoned the plan and set ourselves to figuring out how to get to Terminal 5. 

It was the sketchiest thing I've ever encountered in an American airport. We were made to show documents (already in the secure area), hustled into a dirty hot little hallway crowded with other confused passengers and finally hustled down some dirty steps into the bowels of the airport and onto a filthy packed bus. Lawd! we drove around on the RUNWAYS with AIRPLANES taking off and landing for a good FIFTEEN minutes. 

"No turns, Active taxiway" How about heeding the "No Unauthorized Personnel Beyond This Point" sign I saw earlier?

Planes whooshing by, close enough to feel. Stuff my nightmares are made of.

 We made our flight in good time, boarded, settled into our pods for the next 10 hours. Easy flight. Tata did tray table and other miscellaneous airplane maintenance to pass the time.

Meanwhile, the Semrads were winding their way to London. JoyK discovers "My ass was made for business class!" Yes, girl, it was, all along.