Ahhh....

Home, sweet home! After a 24 hour day, I arrived home last night, happy to have had a great vacation, and even happier to be home safe and sound! I haven't done the complete flight in one day in a couple of years and now I know why not, it is just too hard on me. Hopefully I will always have the time to break up the journey with a night's stay in the middle again. Makes a world of difference for me.

One of the first things I noticed is that when I sign on to write on my blog from home, the words are back in English now. Be sure when you go abroad you know the location of the words you need because they just might show up in an unknown language, such as Flemish. I do see how total immersion works though, even I was beginning to pick up some Flemish/Dutch words! Not that I was saying them correctly of course, but I was familiar with them. The two I almost got right were, "Goya morgan" with a few different sounds in there, meaning good morning. I also practiced the Flemish word for Bruges, Brugge, a lot. It is almost like burger but with a lot of rolling r's after the B. See, a language learner I'm not!

My withdrawal from frites and waffles has begun! Withdrawal from the chocolates...not so much since I brought those back with me, but that day will come too!

My hotel at the airport was a Sheraton and the reviews aren't all great online so I wasn't expecting much but a bed before the trip home. The room had a horrible smell in it, like a backed up sewer, or worse. I complained and was told the hotel was sold out so there weren't any rooms, I went back and insisted it was terrible and was told that housekeeping would check it out and then was told that they did and sprayed some spray and it was fine. Again I walked in and gagged. I thought about it for a while and decided that I was paying too much for that kind of odor and inconvenience and went down to demand someone come up and smell it themselves and if there were no other rooms available they could find me one somewhere else. Well that time I got a darling young girl from Portugal. She said they were indeed full, but I shouldn't have to deal with that so she offered me a room across the hall. I told her I wanted to be sure it didn't smell before I moved everything so she took me up and when I opened the door to my room she gagged and looked like she might just throw up and said something needed to be done! Yep, I'd say! The one across the hall was fine so I moved everything which was a pain, but worth it. I'd already started repacking for the flight home. Leave it to a sweet Portuguese person to make things better for me! Later I went to the airport to look around and pick up a big bottle of water for the night. I shopped around a little, but there wasn't a bit of room left in the suitcase so no buying was possible. Well I did purchase a couple of cat magazines that came with a box of kitty picture cards and everything was in French so I got one for each of our French classes. It was a tight squeeze, but I got them in. When I got back to the room and walked towards my room you could smell very strong scented spray! Pretty funny, but I bet it didn't get rid of the real problem, which I don't even want to imagine was going on. At least it wasn't my room anymore! Unfortunately the room was so hot that I had trouble sleeping but was so tired I didn't want to mess with calling down and having some technician come up and work with it so I discovered that a wet cloth helps keep me cool. Good info I'm sure.

I was up early and crossed the street to the airport. The plane was a bit late leaving but made up the time in the air so that was no problem. The flight was lovely, I was on a plane where the business class seats have been converted to make into beds and you have your own tv so that is a very nice way to travel for that many hours. I watched movies again and read and slept so that part of the journey was nice. After that it was not so nice.

But I arrived home safely and after flames coming out of my hair dryer I had a good night's sleep and although still exhausted, I did pick up my kids and we are all home together!

One more trip complete and what wonderful 'last trip memories' I have now!