If I disliked writing the “last day” post, I really hate writing the “now we are home” post. But it has to be done. Travel today went really quite smoothly: slept in until 7 (or would have if there wasn’t a school group leaving our floor of the hotel at 6 – noisily!) Walked the 50 meters across the road to check in with no problem. No lines at security which gave us plenty of time for a final brekkie (fried eggs, bacon and beans for me – yum) before heading out. One minor burp: Frank dropped his green card going through security and got called back over the PA system. That’s enough to make your heart stop.
Uninteresting flight other than it was an old 757 which is not the best plane for an 8+ hour flight. We paid extra for our seats which I thought gave us extra leg room but apparently just gave us the ability to board earlier to sit longer in our cramped seats. Grrr. Overhead screens and no choice in movie made my kids cranky but I didn’t hear much about it since we couldn’t all get seats together. Landed 20 minutes early – only good thing I can say about USAirways today – then through customs and passport control. Big thumbs up for Philadelphia airport though – efficient and speedy so we had plenty of time to sit at the gate for our commuter flight to DC. Unfortunately, it was an oversold prop plane that left late because they couldn’t get the cabin temperature down. Luckily we only landed about 10 minutes late and the bags followed fairly quickly. Then we were met by Jay of Jay’s Sedan Service whom I had emailed a few days prior. Big thumbs up for Jay – prompt, comfy car and cold water for us and a uneventful ride home.
So now it’s laundry and unpacking and just a short stay for me since I’m off on a business trip tomorrow. But here are some final stats:
Steps: 176, 808 in Italy and 158, 915 in Scotland for a whopping 335, 723 steps! This translates roughly too 76.2 miles in Italy, 63 miles in Scotland (adjusting for the bad conversion for the Goat Fell climb) for a total of 139.2 miles over 18 days!
Hours awake today: 18
Bottles of wine consumed: stopped counting.
Nuns: Eh, don’t care any more.
Pounds gained: not calculating that right now.
Number of wooly jumpers procured: 3 – same as number of pairs of shoes and works of original art.
Number of bottles of whiskey brought back: 2 – same as the number of bottles of Italian wine.
Sunny days: 18
Rainy days: 0
Days with any raindrops at all: 1 in Italy, and ZERO in Scotland!
Best trip ever? Maybe if only because it’s the last we are likely to take as a nuclear family. I’ve enjoyed the time spent with my amazing family including my wonderful (adult!) children, in-laws, nieces, nephews, great aunts and uncles, and other family who are dear to me even if the relationship math is hard to do (second cousins, maybe twice removed?).
And so the countdown begins to the next adventure – say 370 days and counting.
Thanks for following along.
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