The day got off to a rough start before we even left San Francisco. The results of a Covid-19 test we had taken a few days earlier came back inconclusive - not because there was any doubtful result, but simply because I hadn't followed instructions when taking the nose swabs. We were supposed to place the swabs into a media tube, but I had just dropped mine back into the plastic bag it came in. I told Jean to do the same. Result - no test was actualy performed. So, early in the morning we had to rush before our flight to get another test in hopes that it would be ready with a negative result by the time we got to Bucharest. We'll need those to board the Viking river boat in a couple of days.

We then took an Uber to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station nearest to our house. After 45 minutes of lugging our two suitcases and two backpacks between BART trains, we arrived at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

Security and boarding was a breeze and we settled in for our 11 hour flight to Franfurt, Germany before transferring to our final 2 hour leg arriving in Bucharest, Romania.

We were fortunate that there were enough empty seats on the plane to Frankfurt that we could commandeer an entire row of seats and raise the armrests to create a semi-comfortable sleeping space (although sleeping with a N95 mask can't really be called "comfortable").

The Frankfurt airport is an older sprawling complex that requires buses between terminals as well as portable rollaway stairs for boarding and disembarking planes.

Being in the center of Europe, Frankfurt is one of the crossroads of the world - swelled with passengers bound for Nairobi, Tokyo, Istanbul, the America's, and other far flung corners of the world. The babel of languages is mind-boggling. Quite a few travelers from China are wearing hazmat suits and face shields. Given the high Covid-19 infection rate in China, I guess they feel they can't be too careful.

After our four hour Frankfurt layover and and an uneventful short two hour flight, we finally arrived in Bucharest.