Coming home

The next morning is a hectic one as everyone is packing, getting

everything down those twisty stairs, eating  breakfast and having one last picture together as a group.  Then it’s time to catch a tram with all of our luggage, get on the train for the airport and head to Schiphol. Checking in is easy for me and Oscar, but more of a pain for the group, but I’m not being split up from John again.  Everyone gets in easy enough with the exception of one student who gets told that her boarding pass doesn’t have her baggage on there.  So, John has to help her and if our flight wasn’t delayed by an hour a half, we would have missed it because of all of these stoppages.  We head 

through security easily and the customs agent in Schiphol lets Oscar stamp his own passport.  This is a vastly different experience than the one that we have at US customs, but that’s later.  We head out to the furtherest part of the airport possible which takes like 5 moving walkways to get to.  We grab some food and it’s almost time to board.  We have a good flight, but Oscar will not rest at all, which makes it impossible for John or I to rest.  At least the food is a lot better on this flight with KLM than the first.  We get to US customs and come to a complete stop and are in a line with a whole bunch of people who aren’t US citizens, so it

takes forever.  At least all the luggage has arrived by the time we get through, but then the trains that take people between terminals and the parking at O’Hare are not working.  So, they’re bussing people all over the place and it’s a mess.  We finally find a bus to the parking lot we need and as it comes to the first stop in lot G, there is a very loud bang under us and I thought that the tire blew, but apparently it was the hydraulics that lifts and lowers the bus.  So, now we’re walking the rest of the

Memorial stones in front of houses that Jewish occupants were taken from in Amsterdam during the occupation.

parking lot to the car.  Now, there’s just Chicago traffic to battle and finding our US money so that we can pay the tolls.  Oscar passes out in the car about one hour into the drive before we make it to Indiana.   John naps after dinner and I’m still doing okay as long as it is light, but when darkness hits, it’s a good thing that we are only 20 miles from home, because I’ve been up for 22 hours at this point with a small nap on the plane and it’s time to crash.   This was another successful trip though.  I think Oscar was easier to take on this trip than the last.

   
The only problem I had with him was not eating anything new.  But he was doing so many other things new, what can you ask of a 3 year old?  He seems to remember some of the things we saw and appears to want to remember it.  He participated this time and that was fun.  I also learned that I could not cram things in to a trip to Europe.  I've never just traveled in Europe without a strict time table where I'm trying to hit as much as possible.  Most days, Oscar

and I had no agenda, no time we had to wake up, get going, get

back or anything like that and it was totally different way to experience Europe.  I liked it.  I just didn't like how my legs puffed up like tree trunks on the flight back.  I think I'm going to have to take a cruise ship back and forth to Europe from now on and that will be an even better vacation....