Our trip home was delightfully, pleasantly uneventful. We had hired "Paris Chauffeurs" for a private car from the hotel to the airport. They were responsive via email, helpful on planning the best pickup time, prompt, courteous and so helpful that the driver even walked us into the airport and up to our airline gate for us! We were early, but there was still a huge line...but while we waited, I realized there was a separate line for those who were only doing baggage dropoff. Of course I had checked-in the day before, and had our boarding passes downloaded, so I was pretty sure we qualified to be in that shorter line. We took the chance and hopped over there, and luckily I was right. We were done in about 15 minutes after the check-in desks opened for the day.
We stopped at a McDonald's for drinks (first coffee of the day) before going through security. Security lines were short, too, and we were at our gate about 2 hours early. We ate breakfast, going to the Starbucks a couple of times because the girls found out they had pancakes and muffins, and of course Curt and I needed more caffeine.
As we boarded the plane, I handed off the gifts for the flight attendants again. N and I had made little goodie-bags each with a $5 Starbucks gift card, a "Thank you!" note printed out by N, and some local chocolates. On the trip to Europe, we had stuffed Hershey Kisses in the baggies, and on the way home we bought Lindt chocolates for this purpose. On both flights, we were thanked personally by every single flight attendant on board. This trip, they went a bit extra, and we were given the same gift that the First Class passengers got, and a hand-written thank you note!
The kit has socks, an eye mask, ear buds, a pen, a face cleansing cloth, tissues and a toothbrush and toothpaste, all in a hard-shell case. We were chuffed that the little tokens were received so well...made it totally worth carrying those baggies all over Europe with us!
The rest of the flight home was about the same as the flight out...we all watched movies, took short but useless naps, got a couple of meals/snacks that no one really enjoyed, and landed safely.
We had originally hired another private car to get us home from Newark, but a few days earlier we got an offer from Curt's sister to pick us up. Everyone agreed we were tired of being driven around by strangers, so we took her up on that. She met us at the airport and we got to talk all about the trip the whole way home.
We got home to find both pets alive and well, the house clean, our bedsheets washed and the dishes done....what a great house-sitter!
I may write more about this trip later, but for now, this is the end. It is actually Aug 6th, 2022 today - a month since we arrived home - and I am still beyond ecstatic that we had this adventure. I really feel like words are inadequate, but I sincerely hope I've managed to capture the feelings and memories so that when I read this again in a few years, it will all come back.
When I named this blog "Where Will This Go From Here?" I was honestly not sure what this trip would do to my family. It was 50/50 whether it would be a disaster or a success. I can happily say that we are looking forward to our NEXT trip to Europe...we are just having such a hard time deciding where to go!! 💖💖😂
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