Home

We are back in our home in Suquamish, having arrived safely on Saturday. Jessica and Albert and our grandson Antonio met us at the airport - we were so happy to see them! Our plane was late - about 45 minutes - but they had been checking our progress online and knew we had been late taking off, so they planned accordingly. Our little Antonio has grown so much! Although we had been skyping regularly, he looks even more grown up in person! He is a real little boy now, not an infant!

Our last few days in Sablet were a mixture of savoring France and anticipating going home. The weather continued to be quite warm and the blue skies, green vineyards and noisy cicadas made an impression that will last for a long time. We ate dinner at our favorite restaurants, drank as much wine as we could (we had more than we could bring home under customs regulations) and generally soaked up life in rural Provence. We also did laundry, packed and weighed bags, ate leftovers and finished books in an effort to prepare as much ahead of time as we could for our car-train-plane-plane journey.

On Friday morning, August 6, we checked out of the apartment with Ros, our Australian landlords' on site person. We drove the rental car back to Avignon and checked it in - thankfully no problems with either. Then we waited for the high speed train to take us from Avignon to Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. One of the wonderful things about flying business class is the airline lounge that is available to you. We waited for our flight to London in British Airlines' lounge very comfortably! Our flight left on time. We went through the usual checks at Heathrow and then walked to the convenient Sofitel hotel that connects with the main terminal. The room was great!

On Saturday we simply walked back over to Terminal 5, checked our bags and went to the BA lounge there. When we could, we boarded the flight and then sat as we waited for a storm system and the resultant backup to ease. Finally we took off.

And now we are in the midst of trying to unpack and move back into our home. It is a slow task but things are getting done. All in good time.

Some final thoughts about our year. We are so glad that we took this trip! It was the adventure of a lifetime for us and we learned so much! When we think about all the places we've been, people we've met and experiences we've had, we can hardly believe it. We envy the Europeans their close proximity to many different languages and cultures and their consequent appreciation of and comfort level in many different countries. We are thankful that the EU makes travel so easy, with the euro and simple travel procedures such as wonderful highways with common signage and no border checks. Europeans seem calmer and less anxious about their daily lives, which is something that Americans should adopt, in our opinion. We saw almost no traffic jams, let alone accidents. No road rage. People were always friendly and willing to help us with whatever we needed.

We do have a list of places that we'd like to see that we missed this time, and places to which we'd like to return. However we have no plans to go anywhere for the next little while and our next trip will be to another area of the world; there is so much to see and experience on the earth! Please send us an email etc with your thoughts on our blog and journey, if you'd like to. For now, "happy trails to you until we meet again"!

Photos, from top left: Jon outside our apartment door; some of our new friends in Sablet - Mimi, Alain and Bruno; Jon and Bruno (owner of the Sports Bar restaurant); Alain and Mimi (owners of the small grocery store); Dominic (owner of our favorite restaurant - Les Remparts) and his sister; the boulangerie lady; our big helper at the Tourist Information; a bottle of the local wine; Ros, the on site manager of our apartment; our last dinner in Sablet; and we're home!