Day 11 - Back in this Hemisphere at least!

This is a continuation of our attempts to get home from Barcelona, a city I wish I had more time in. What I saw of it on our bus ride from seaport to airport looked fascinating!

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So, a lovely trip home, pampered, treated like royalty...and then, the Toronto Pierson Airport.

I took this picture of the Vatican on our 1st day
in Rome but didn't have room for it in my
post for that day. Put it here because its one of
my favorites and I didn't have a pic for
this post. :)

If they’d allowed us to just leave the airport once we had a wheelchair, we’d have been through customs and out in less than an hour. But they were short-staffed and insisted we be accompanied by someone (I don’t know, maybe they were worried we’d steal their chair?) and it took over two hours to get from the plane to the curb where we needed to pick up the hotel shuttle. Two hours!!! Constant hurry up and wait. Only 2 women to move over twenty people from several different flights. We finally gave them the slip and maanged to snag a porter after going through customs. Steven pushed me, the porter took our bags and used a shortcut to get to the shuttle. Movement!

Didn’t have to wait long for the shuttle – off to the hotel to pick up the car! We made potty stops, longer for me because the women's restroom was further away (of course) than the men's room. Steven got directions to get from the hotel to the QEW – I can get us home once we’re on that. 

Of course, we drove out of the hotel parking lot and promptly turned north instead of south (just give me rights and lefts at night when the sun’s down!). Turned around and had no trouble navigating to the QEW.

Except we needed gas. Picked an exit that didn’t have an easy off-easy on, of course. Drove around the docks of Hamilton for a bit until we found a gas station. Got directions back to the QEW and headed home.

Decided to take the Queenstown/Lewisburg bridge, thinking the traffic would be easier than going through Niagara Falls on a Saturday night. Turns out to be a good decision. Got to US Customs and the agent asked all the normal questions. Then he asked if we had a good trip, just being conversational as he waited for our passports to clear. Steven told him I’d broken my leg and that got his attention. He loved hearing that I broke it on the volcano and chuckled at the line one of the passengers onboard the Emerald Princess gave us: “She heard a rumble and ran.” J

The ride home was hard in that we were both exhausted. Called the kids to let them know we were three hours from home, not in Dublin like we were supposed to be. I'll be honest, it was upsetting that first day, to know we had to come home because of a single misstep. We shed our tears, but we’d made a promise to each other when we started that we’d only look for the positive. No complaining about anything, no matter what.

And we kept to that. Took some attitude adjustment last Monday, but we both got there about the same time (okay, maybe Steven got there first, but don’t tell him I said that!). We had a grand time, if not the time we expected to have. Ireland will still be there after my leg heals and we’ll appreciate it all the more. We’re seasoned travelers now and we kept ourselves awake on the ride home last night talking about what we’d do differently and what we did right (trip insurance? YES! Thank goodness we’d bought that!).

We came home and crashed, having been up for 27 hours with only the naps on the plane to keep us going. Neither of us wanted caffeine – we wanted to sleep once home. It was after 2:00 AM Eastern by this point and we'd been up since 5:00 AM the day before - Barcelona time. 

But here we are, home, filled with pictures and memories, and plans to do it all over again. Why not? 

Adventure awaits!

Play safe,

Diana