Day 65 - Heading Home

Our wonderful summer of travel, discovery, friends, and family has come to an end. We traveled to seven countries, stayed in 17 hotel rooms (some days were definitely harder than others to remember our room number), had eight train trips on more that twenty trains, not counting the London Tube, six flights, and ten or more laundry days. We never ran for a train, bus, or flight!

We learned more things than we will remember: hit the hay, sleep tight, shit faced, tours by locals, atlasobscura.com, High Street (in every town and curved to help with cut down the wind), that there is more than one Anne Hathaway, raining cats and dogs, seeing cats everywhere until we got to Ireland…

We had incredible weather throughout the summer and we’re happy to miss the Texas heat. There was very little rain and only a few days above 90 degrees. We can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit fairly accurately (double and add 30). We walked hundreds of miles this summer and mostly enjoyed it. We missed our friends and family but we’re lucky enough to catch up with some of them towards the end of the trip.

I will not miss hand dryers. I know they are better for the environment but I was forever finishing by wiping my hands on my jeans. I will miss being able to walk or jump on the tube for just about anywhere we wanted to go. I will miss the water, either being on or in it, walking over it, or stumbling across a random creek, stream, or lake, in our travels. I won’t miss the chips – give me skinny fries any day. I will miss the ease of walking down just about any street and finding a pub for a pint or a glass of wine. I will miss all the new beers we tasted. We had local beer in every country and almost always in a glass with the name of the beer. This is a cool practice that is not used in the USA.

I will miss the incredibly helpful pharmacists in Iceland, Scotland, and Ireland who recommended medication for my long lasting summer cold. I even appreciate the one who asked if I’d taken a Covid test – uh yes, about seven of them throughout the monthlong cold.

I will also miss tap and pay. It is much more prevalent outside the US, and they bring the reader to you, no taking your card away. Apple Pay had a robust workout over the past few months!

I will miss the hills and valleys, the greenness of Ireland, the sheep, cows, and other livestock that were prevalent everywhere we went.

I will definitely, definitely miss the full Irish / English breakfast. There’s no way to eat that at home, but when you know you’re walking 4-5 miles a day, no problem! I’ll also miss someone else making and cleaning up breakfast every day, lol.

I will not miss whoever stole my credit card number at the Liverpool Marriott. Chase Bank is smarter than we are and flagged the transactions even before we did. There’s a special place in hell for these feckin eejits (awesome Irish term).

I will not miss remote boarding and deplaning, lots of stairs, buses, carrying luggage all over the place. Nor will I miss the general chaos that ensues when boarding British Airways’ planes. Seriously, there has to be a better way. Today’s flight from London boarded 15 minutes before departure. So stupid!

I will miss all the friendly people we encountered along the way. People in bars, taxi drivers, our awesome tour guides – shout out to Lorraine, Mick, and Collin, people who took our picture or whose picture we took 📷📷📷. I will miss the twins, Mary and Bridgette, who were awesome to us in London and have followed and remarked on our journey all summer. Definitely have to see these two again.

The trip did what I really needed it to do, which was give me some peace from the losses of 2021. I desperately needed to come to terms with them and I did; in all the beauty we encountered along our way, the places, the people, and the experiences.

Martha will not miss being pulled out of airport security because she basically carries a Best Buy store in her luggage.  She will not miss “back bacon” which is a different cut and is supposed to be healthier (is healthy bacon an oxymoron?)

Martha will miss all of the random Harry Potter references in every country including the mention at the cave in the Cliffs of Moher (book 6). She will miss reading all of the strange and sometimes confusing signs.  Here are a few more that tickled her:

 Martha will not miss any of the clothes that she brought and wishes they will all find good homes from the thrift store.  She will not miss having to accept/decline cookies on every single new web page she opens (secretly, though, she acknowledges and appreciates that internet security is much tighter in other countries.) She will be happy to have AT&T wireless, everyday, all day, but will still find the occasional pub to use the Wi-Fi.

But most of all, Martha will miss waking up every day to a new adventure with Maggie; not knowing when we walk out the door what we are going to see, or learn, or how we will feel about it at the end of the day.  It has been an awesome two months and neither of us would have traded away one minute of it.

We are blessed to have taken this journey, but we worked hard to make it happen. Many have said it’s the trip of a lifetime, but we are hoping it was the cool trip in 2022, with many more cool trips to come.