Finally home

Well, welcome to the unplanned 37th day of our trip…and to start off, more observations about the hotel (Tryp Diana for those of you keeping tabs)! The most obvious one was the shower, which has a pretty cool setup but also an enormous amount of water pressure. After all the weak showers we’ve had I almost fell over. Unfortunately it was so hard that it turned into a mist when it hit, so the entire bathroom ended up a bit soggy. Nothing really new after curtainless Greece but still, 4 stars?! Also we were interrupted by housekeeping at 8:40 and 9AM, who didn’t knock and almost walked in on me in my underwear the first time. I guess our fault for not leaving the ‘do not disturb’ sign out? We haven’t done that all trip…plus I figured we were in Spain, no one is up that early. Oh well. Perhaps the important lesson is that four-stars aren’t really much better than three-stars. Also that non-cheese, non-meat food in Spain is as depressing as ever, given that the yogurt and apples we bought yesterday were probably the worst I’ve had in a long time. Sigh.

Once they dropped us off at the airport (free shuttle ain’t bad at least) it wasn’t important though. We got there supremely early, by almost three hours, and checked in and bided our time comfortably. We even had time to look around the shops! Not much to actually consider though, as it seems that the only reasonable thing in Duty Free is alcohol. Everything else is horrendous. But we did manage to get free samples of dark chocolate and some sort of peanut thing, plus fountain water, so I suppose we took the shops for all they were worth without buying anything. We only had 3.86E left at that point, after scrounging up an extra 3.50E from our bags and finding a cent on the ground. Since I was hungry and euros would be useless after Madrid, it became my job to finish them off. After considerable scouting, I found a little Spanish omelet sandwich for 3.05 (believe me, no easy task) and convinced the Starbucks lady to give me an 85 cent mini chocolate muffin for my remaining 81 cents. Bwuahaha!

A little while later we boarded the plane (exactly on time to the minute! After Olympic I’m shocked) and took off! Woo hoo! We even got lunch on the plane…a little sandwich and a kit kat at least, plus a mysterious little tube of milk (mmm, tastes like Europe milk…oh wait, not really a good thing). Made my previous search a little silly but it was still fun. Time passed uneventfully throughout the flight and soon enough we were through to Heathrow, looking at fancy gadget shops, waiting a bit, and then on our flight home! Finally. Unfortunately we had been placed square in the baby screaming zone, as there were twin infants plus assorted other children in our section that took turns being incredibly upset. For the entire seven hours. Glblugh. Peter and I tried to escape by watching movies, but their entertainment system was down so we only got a small fraction of what we were supposed to have access to. We ended up watching The Soloist (eh, it was ok I guess?) and then I watched some random Indian movie while Peter continued to plow through sudoku. Mostly we just stayed up going “grr babies” but after more than enough of that we arrived back on American soil. And our checked bag made it, and we weren’t stopped on the way out. What a relief.

So kudos to the Adelmans for picking up the groggy travelers and feeding them nice American leftovers for dinner! Yay hamburgers and sweet corn (and MILK!). Peter and I split the gifts (found some things we had forgotten about) before they drove me back home. Ahh home, with tons of moving stuff piled up and lots waiting to be in boxes…switching from ‘europe ahh’ to ‘packing ackkk’ is not a thing I look forward to. I’d like to just relax for the next week but that would be impossible. Sadness. But doling out presents was (and will be) fun, as was going to sleep in my own comfy comfy bed. And waking up and getting eggs in a basket (and MILK! Yeah that’s not old yet). And taking a shower will be excellent when it is available. And not spending any more freaking euros…

For a second when I laid down last night it felt like I had never left, because nothing had moved. But 37 days is a long time and there’s a pretty good hole in my wallet now, not to mention the almost-4 gigs of pictures I’ve taken (more selections will be up soon). This was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime trip, not just because it was so notable but also because I don’t think we would survive doing it like this again. There was too much stress about the plane situation coming and going, for one thing. Stress on our bodies would be another point. Hopefully next time we can organize whatever we do much better given all this experience…or just hire a travel agent. Whuf. But I think we did pretty well despite all our planning mistakes. Hooray.

I will probably update once more when I get around to posting the pictures…otherwise thanks for reading!