Noon Report:

• Location: N 51° 28.17′, W 000° 27.5′ (Heathrow Airport)
• Speed: Waiting
• Course: None
• Weather: Cloudy
• Temperature: 16º C, 61º F
• Wind: WNW 8 knots, 9 mph

The alarm went off at 6:00. Which is not to say that it woke us up. On a big day like today you don’t tend to sleep.

We were up and ready and out to breakfast of (you guessed it) at (you guessed it). We said our last good-byes to the Mamsen’s crew and returned to our room to gather our hand-carried bits and bobs (our suitcases to be shipped went out last night) and reported in to the gathering place to at 7:45.
We chatted with a few friends as we waited and at about 8:15 they called our group to tender ashore, claim our luggage, and find our bus.

That settled we were off on the 1.5 hour trip to Heathrow airport.

At the airport we quickly printed our luggage tags, cleared security, and made our way to the United Club for a bit of lunch and a relaxing rest before boarding our flight.

On board we settled in to the First Class “pods” (great for stretching out/sleeping on a long flight), were handed a glass (actual glass not plastic) of wine and, well flew (and ate) our way home. In first class we got TABLECLOTHES on our pull-out tables for the dinner service – the bathroom had a hand-clap-activated sink and toilet (which I couldn’t get to work).

At Denver we encountered the first weather-related hiccup since New Zealand (as the captain always told us,” I’m in charge of the ship and you are in charge of the weather” – and we had done a great job). A thunder and lightning storm rolled over the airport which resulting in them closing access to the ramp (they don’t want the workers hit by lightning while refueling, restocking, and loading up suitcases).

One of the hallmarks of this trip has been the weather. Very often we would arrive at a port where the predicted rain would turn out to be Partly Cloudy, or we would be told; “It’s so lucky that you weren’t here yesterday, the weather was really bad then.” We were truly blessed.
Until Denver. But even that was only an hour delay or so.

We arrived home, with all our luggage present at about 10:30 pm (5:30 am London time – 23.5 hours after our alarm went off this morning) so it was a full day with lots of sitting.
Such is travel.

Now we’re home and life goes on:

• Appointments for this, that, and the other
• Grocery run for restocking
• Several loads of laundry
• Harvesting the dandelion crop and turning on the sprinkler system
• Heading up to Portland to pick up our mail
• Hiding all those bits and bobs ‘in a good safe place’ so we won’t be able to find them for the next cruise

People who ask; “What was your favorite part?” get a blank stare. There were so many truly amazing moments that it’s literally impossible to pick 1 or 2 or 25 or even 100 favorites.
What will we remember? All of it. Not all at once but every now and then something we see or something someone will say will trigger a memory for one of us and we’ll share that memory and we’ll be thankful all over again that we had this opportunity to see just how big and wide and wonderful the world is out there.