Homeward bound!

I’m sitting in the Toronto airport, having just made it through US Customs Preclearance. The nice gentleman who checked my passport said “Welcome home!” Well…almost there! Abbey and I have divided our journey home into three phases…Berlin to London: Check. London to Seattle: Half-check. Seattle to Wenatchee: yet to come. Our flight to Seattle is a little delayed at this point.
Our last day in Berlin was nice and lazy. Kristen asked, ‘Is there anything you guys want to do before you leave?” to which we replied, “Nope!” We walked to the grocery store with Kristen and helped her carry home some heavy grocery bags filled with snacks for a party for their students, and other than that we hung around the apartment until John and Kristen drove us to the airport (SO nice that they drove us…that much less lugging about of the backpacks!)
We got checked in and sat around the Berlin airport, and decided that we much prefer North American airports over European! In our experience at European airports on this trip, you wait in line to check in, then wait in line to check your baggage, then wait in line to check your boarding pass, then wait in line in security, then wait in line to send your shoes through security, then wait in a waiting area with totally insufficient seating for your gate to be posted (because they never post it more than an hour before), then join the mad dash to your gate once they post it, where you wait in line to go through passport checks, then wait in line to get you boarding pass checked to enter the boarding area, where you wait until they actually board the plane and then you wait in line to get on the plane! You may have noticed a theme here. :)
We made it to London without any problems…a little late, but no connections to make, so no big deal. Amy was most excited to see English books in the bookshops; Abbey was most excited that we knew exactly how to navigate all the transportation! We caught the Gatwick Express back into London where we caught the Underground out to Heathrow, where we found our Yotel. For those who don’t know, a Yotel is a little hotel located in the airport. This one is in Terminal 4 at Heathrow, tucked in between some restaurants and an internet area. It was so cool! The rooms are small, but definitely more spacious than our first London room, and you can’t get much more convenient than sleeping comfortably at the airport! We had bunkbeds with really nice linens, a tiny little fold-out table, and a huge bathroom with the nicest showerhead ever! Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the internet to work, but we went to bed on time instead. We got to sleep in a bit in the morning and then catch the transit to Terminal 3 and check in around 10:00.
We left Heathrow about an hour late…there was a wheelchair rugby team on our flight and it took a while to get everyone in place, but thankfully, we had a three hour layover here, so we didn’t stress too much about the delay. The flight actually went pretty quickly from London (about 8 hours). We love in-flight entertainment. I watched three movies, a BBC sketch comedy, and listened to XM radio. Now that helps pass the time!
And now I’m off to buy some food before the flight since apparently our five hour flight only offers “food for purchase.” I’ll be posting this from home!!