The alarm went off and I jumped out of bed to get showered and ready to go. We had tea and muffins for the last time in the room. Kat's rash was pretty bad today so she was happy that was the last night on that bed. We think she was allergic to the detergent they used on the sheets. We finished packing our bags, checked out and said good-bye to the apartment at 6:45 in the morning.
We lugged our stuff to Earl's Court station for the last time and caught the Piccadilly Line Westbound to Heathrow terminal 4. There weren't any seats available on the train even that early in the morning. There were a few other travelers with luggage getting on the train and they stood with us near the doors. When we were one stop away from the airport, the train hit a bump in the track and one gal’s bag fell over. The metal handle struck Kat on the side of her knee. It seemed that throughout this whole trip Kat attracted chaos to her, and this was just one more example of it.
We left the train at terminal 4. Our Oyster cards worked fine thanks to Paul, our favorite tube attendant. I had printed off our boarding passes at the apartment the previous evening. They were fancy eliteAccess First Class tickets and got us into the fast track check-in lines. We checked our bags and then went through the priority line at security. We were able to use the Sky Team lounge at Heathrow, where we sat and had some juice and I had a banana and some breakfast sausages. Kat used her computer while I read my book. I was getting close to finishing it. I was still on my first one for this trip; Kat was on her third. I definitely packed too many books.
Our flight from London to Newark was nice. We had the sleeping pods again for that segment of the journey home. Our flight attendant was a bit surly, however. We thought she was having a bad day because she was short with everyone around us. Kat and I were both sort of grossed out by the guy across the aisle and in front of us who had taken off his shoes and socks and was using his toes to change the channel and make selections on his entertainment console. He had his naked feet propped up on the seat back in front of him. I was surprised our flight attendant didn't lay the smack down on him. When we arrived in the states, they passed out customs forms for us to fill out and the announcement said that everyone needed to fill one out, but only one per family. When Kat tried to clarify with our surly attendant she said we didn't count as a family because Kat didn’t change her name when we got married. That put us in a bad mood.
Since we apparently weren't a family, we went through immigration separately. The gal at the immigration desk asked Kat if she was traveling alone and she said, “No, I'm with my new husband,” and she pointed at me. Kat explained what the flight attendant told us about her not changing her name, but the gal said that was a load of hooey. When I came through she said next time just fill out one and don't let anyone say we're not a family.
At Newark airport we went to use the President's Lounge, but got held up by the desk clerk checking credentials. He said we needed to be on an international flight to qualify for the lounge. I tried to explain that we were on an international flight and that we had just got off of the trans-Atlantic portion. He asked to see the boarding pass that I luckily still had on hand and then begrudgingly let us in after a passing comment about showing the international boarding pass first next time. After we found a seat I double-checked the boarding passes and noticed that both had the “INTL” stamp on them, so he was just being an incompetent boob. We had a 3-hour layover until our final flight, so we got comfortable. I worked on my blog while Kat read her book and we drank some wine until it was time to go.
Our last flight was less than impressive after our goo-filled pods. I broke two of the complimentary earphones before they gave me a pair that worked. We spent our flight watching stuff on our tiny tvs, reading, and sleeping. The food wasn't quite as good as our previous in-flight meals. Kat made me eat her lobster. We landed in Seattle at 8:10 pm, after more than 20 hours of travel time. We collected our bags and called for a shuttle back to the Clarion Hotel. It took them awhile to pick us up, and we finally got back to Kat's car around 9:30. From there we plotted our path to the cabin out at Grapeview using TomTom. It took us another hour and a half to get there. When we did, Mom & Dad were there to welcome us home from our trip. We stayed up chatting with them for a bit until we got too tired to stay up. Travel had worn us out.
We spent the next couple days at Grapeview recovering from our trip. We were both pretty jet-lagged and had problems sleeping through the night. I would wake up at 4am and then have trouble getting back to sleep, then my energy levels would take a nose dive around 2pm the following day. We didn't do much on Saturday other than read our books and relax. Sunday we had a bunch of friends and family from the area come out to celebrate our return with us. It was very nice to see everyone and have such a warm welcome. After the party had died down and we had had our fill of food and drink we packed up the car and made the long drive home to Eugene. We arrived around 11pm to a nicely cleaned house, thanks to Heidi, and our two silly kitties that had missed us very much. Despite our fantastic vacation, it was still nice to finally be home.
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