Coming Home: Saturday Nov 7, England to Spain

One month later (to the day) here is the account of our cruise home.

Got up at o-dark-thirty in the morning and trudged up the hill with all of our worldly possessions to catch the bus  to the airport. Wouldn’t you know it, about 2 blocks before we got to the bus stop, there goes the bus down the road 7 minutes early. It decided not to wait for us either, as when we got to the stop it was long gone. Instead we got to wait outside in the butt-cold early morning air for an hour and a bit for the next bus. Luckily that bus did not stop at Heathrow Airport before going to Gatwick, so we got there a good deal earlier than expected, and even had time to catch one last English breakfast….even though we were delayed in security. In the security line Courtney forgot to remove a pair of scissors (which were small enough to be allowed anyway), but it was enough to get her bag hand searched. Due to Courtney’s packing skill, it took approximately forever for the screener to search the whole bag. I think the screener was actually kind of impressed. While she did not find any explosives or box cutters, she did in fact find 14 tubes of lip gloss or chapstick that counted as liquids and needed to be screened separately. When asked how many lips she has, Courtney answered “14.”

Flying over southern Spain brought out a home sickness in Dave as it looks like you are flying over Arizona with mountains and brown undeveloped land, as opposed to England where it is endless rolling hills covered in green fields bordered with hedge rows. We arrived at our hotel in Torremolinos, Spain mid afternoon. The warmth was a revelation. While it was only in the mid 70’s, it was as warm as it ever got in England this summer and it was also a completely cloud free day, the kind you take for granted in AZ,  but begin to miss after day after day of gray, drizzly skies. We decided  to make good use of it, and literally shed our jeans, sweaters and jackets that we had needed that morning and donned our swim suits. We relaxed on the beautiful beach until the sun set behind a large hotel. During the evening hours, we walked the seafront looking at shops and restaurants. We had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant (who also has a restaurant in Santa Barbara, CA and gave us a card in case we wanted to go there). We then removed our flippy floppies and walked barefoot on the beach back to our hotel. On the beach we found a naked dwarf who decided to join us on our journey home. Once back at the hotel we watched a BBC World Service debate on the Catholic Church and went to bed early.