Our flight back home wasn’t until the afternoon, so we weren’t sure how we would spend the day. We ended up having a fairly massive hotel breakfast. Ironically, our first hotel breakfast of our trip. At the table next to us sat a man with his son- just a few years younger than Nate. He was American, living in England, visiting France. It turned out that Nate and this kid spent most of the day in a kid’s play room at the hotel while we took turns packing. Nate didn’t mind- he discovered Angry Birds on a computer kiosk.
The best part of the day, and one of the highlights of the entire trip, was when we told Nate that we were going home today. He moaned and said
I don’t want to go home. I want to see more things.
After 32 days away from his toys and friends, for him to say this made us realize that Nate, age 6, had become a true traveler!
At the airport, across the courtyard and one stop on the free shuttle train, everything went smoothly until we got to the gate. We were delayed. And delayed again. And now an airplane part was being flow to Paris from… London. Ugh. United was generous with the meal vouchers, and we loaded up at the one restaurant in our area of the airport. That was the worst part- the gate had almost no shops, and was crowded and hot.
When we finally boarded, we knew we would make it to America, but probably not home.
The flight was long. We slept some, but only three hours or so. We landed in Dulles at 11:30pm, and it took us about two hours to get our luggage, go through customs, and ride a shuttle bus to the hotel where the airline was putting us up. We managed to get to bed at 2:00 am.
Welcome back to America!
Das Haus von Ruh 