The Journey, Part III.

After 9 weeks, my tour of certain parts of "the Americas" is complete. I still can't really believe that it's over; it really did fly by. It was an amazing experience, during which time I was fortunate to see some stunning natural beauty; visit and embrace all kinds of cities; meet lovely local people; catch up with old friends; eat wonderful food, of both the cheap and expensive variety, and learn about myself in ways that are only possible when you spend intense periods of time with only 1 other person, or are away from home for a very long time. It was truly eye-opening and a huge amount of fun. Though, naturally, of course, there were times when I would have given an arm and a leg to have had Michael with me, get a cuddle from mum, or eat Ols' spag bol! It was also great to get to know Thomas so well after so many years of being friends, and I look forward to seeing him much more frequently over many years to come, particularly now that he has an apartment in Copenhagen (wink wink). I genuinely just feel so lucky to have been able to make so many incredible life-long memories over the last 2 months and to have seen so much of the world, even though it was really only the tiniest fraction. 

As for Thomas' and my actual journey home, it should come as no surprise by now that it was a complete and utter disaster. The travelling God is definitely not on my side and continues to punish me for heavens knows what. I'm hoping that the spell has finally been lifted with this cracker, but only time will tell. So, here's the story. Thomas and I arrived at New York La Guardia airport on time, with our travel documents printed and in hand. When it became my turn to check in I happily handed over my passport and waited for the usual quick process of ticking me off the list and tagging my bag to be completed. Although, as I'm sure you can guess, this is not what happened. Instead, the check-in lady looked up at me with a blank face and told me that I was not in the system, i.e. I was not booked on the flight and, better yet, that it was oversold, so I had no way of getting on it. The icing on the cake was that there was no issue with Thomas' reservation, and she located him as a passenger on the plane in just a few seconds. It didn't take long for the tears to start streaming, particularly when she started telling me that I would most likely have to spend the night on my own in Toronto. With only 8 nights at home before I jet off again for another 8 weeks, every millisecond in the UK counts and I was heartbroken to think that I would be losing such precious time. I was on the phone to STA for 20 minutes trying to find out what on earth had gone wrong, during which time I think the check-in lady might have cottoned on to how desperate I was to get home, because she managed to find a solution that only delayed my arrival into Heathrow by 4 hours AND was able to transfer Thomas on to my flight so that we could travel home together. The ironic thing is that I actually paid extra for my ticket home so that Thomas wouldn't have to fly back on his own! So thankfully everything kind of worked out in the end, but I can assure you that it was a bloody traumatic process, which left me totally emotionally exhausted.

Both legs of our flight were on time and we managed to waste away our 5 and a half hour wait in Ottawa by watching back-to-back episodes of Orange is the New Black, so I must admit that things could really have been much worse. Plus, for once, I actually slept pretty much the entire journey home, so the flight time passed by nice and quickly and I got a few good hours kip in ready to see my MJ.

Hello home!!!