Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Heading Home...The Final Lap

06/05, TuesdayIt's a very nice weather day. The clouds are high in the mountains and there is blue sky. Breakfast is filling and it's time to check-out. We are missing our last bobble (out of four we started with 8 months ago). Time to go home ! We take a last walk through the old town, viewing the magnificent mountains and check where we had dinner for the bobble.

We're on the train to Verona where we transfer to Milan, our last stop before catching a plane home tomorrow. By the look of signs outside the train, we have just passed into Italy...town names are in both German and Italian. We have seen some beautiful country through train and bus windows.

We must be tired and anxious to get home. When we arrived in Milan (not our favorite place, remember the stolen wallet episode here on our arrival in October?) today, our first challenge was to find the shuttle bus to the Malpensa airport. Not that we needed to catch a plane, but in order to catch another shuttle bus to our hotel which is near the airport.

All told, today we handled our luggage 15 times...pulling and lifting onto trains, taxis, buses, elevators, escalators. That leaves 5 more pulls-lifts for tomorrow. Can you tell we are ready to see our family and Chicagoland?

It has been a grand adventure though and we sure have many, many wonderful memories. Travel is a great learning experience. We have seen lots, done lots, but the thing that stands out the most are all the fun, wonderful people we came in contact with and the time spent with them.

Being with Yuko, John, Emma and Nicky was certainly special and our trip together to Thailand holds lots of memories.

06/06, Wednesday...flying home
We made our check-out early to avoid the long lines later and then enjoyed a very nice breakfast that was included in our room charge.

Earlier the shower head fell off while I was showering making enough noise to wake Mom. She thought I had fallen out of the tub and came running into the bathroom, very scared.

We have a couple of hours until the first leg of our return flight...to Copenhagen, Sweden...on SAS. It's a perfect time to watch a downloaded movie, "Frida", about Frida Kahlo with Salma Hychek and Albert Molina and Antonio Banderas. This is a follow-up to the "Frida" dance program we saw in Innsbruck.

We have a two hour lay over in Copenhagen, but don' think we will see much of Sweden. Tempting though and it is our twelfth country! Instead, we'll finish the movie while waiting.

Sue was right there waiting when we got out of customs looking great. She took the El out to the airport and then Vince picked us all up, which was so nice. First hug when we got to their place was from Maddie, no more braces, several inches taller and beautiful. Paige arrived from work and greeted us with her wonderful smile and is a such a nice poised young woman. Zach got home from LaCrosse practice and he also grew quite a bit and is now a big middle school student. We literally fell into bed since our bodies thought it was 4:30 am. We are home !

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