Homeward Bound

After arriving back in Malta late evening on Tuesday, we spent the day on Wednesday doing final walk-throughs of the student flats to make sure that things were put away and that everything was more or less clean. The Luther storage room in our flat is once again too full to walk into more than a few steps.

Thursday morning was final packing of our stuff. We don't buy lots of souvenirs and we always travel with our oldest, most worn-out clothing so that we don't feel bad about leaving it behind. Why, then, did our bags feel so heavy? One of the mysteries of travel life! But after traveling light around Europe, with only backpacks for days at a time, it seemed very strange to have so much stuff.

The taxi was early -- a rare event in Malta. Upon check-in, we learned that Lufthansa had comped us tickets to the VIP Lounge at Malta International Airport. Free lunch and free booze! We don't know what we did to get this, but we took full advantage of it -- even though it wasn't quite noon yet.

The plane from Malta to Frankfurt was right on time, but there was some sort of equipment delay in Frankfurt, so our plane did not depart until over an hour past the scheduled time. There were a lot of people missing connecting flights (Lufthansa was great about passing out hotel vouchers to these folks, so far as we could see, and few seemed to be complaining).

We feared we might be among those stranded in Chicago, as ours was the last flight of the day from Chicago to Des Moines. But as it turned out, we had time to spare. Immigration and Customs in Chicago are now largely electronic, so that process is swift. The horror stories about long security lines at O'Hare did not come true for us as we switched from international to domestic terminals. It helps to be traveling late at night.

By the time we got aboard that little commuter jet headed to Iowa, we had been awake for more than 26 hours. I had had a few brief catnaps (those glasses of complimentary wine in the VIP Lounge and aboard the Lufthansa flights contributed greatly), but Mary had been unable to sleep at all. Needless to say, we were dragging.

All luggage arrived in good shape, right along with us. In fact, our big bags were among the first off the plane and onto the baggage claim carousel. 

My parents insisted on coming to pick us up, even though the plane arrived (earlier than scheduled) at about midnight. We wanted to take a cab, but even at age 88 my Mom did well driving at night with my Dad, nearly 94 and able to see very little, cheering her on. We all went straight to bed, but Mary and I were both up and awake before 6 a.m. Jet lag sucks.

We set out for home on Friday afternoon, feeling pretty good, and arrived about 5 p.m. to find our house in amazingly good shape, save for some dust and quite an array of weeds in the garden. The water came back on with no leaks, water heater and refrigerator both came back to life and did their expected duty.

Saturday, which also came early for us, is unpacking and mail-sorting day. We are more tired today than yesterday, as the adrenaline rush of travel has worn off. There will be plenty of chores to keep us busy for the next week or so, at least. But I wonder how long it will before we start thinking about a new travel destination?