no place like home

I'm back from my vacation. We returned on Sunday night, after 19 hours of traveling, which included two flights, a long layover in Chicago, and an unexpected two-hour delay on the tarmac. I know our two hours were nothing compared to those poor folks who, a few days earlier, sat on a grounded Continental plane for six hours—from midnight to six a.m. Yowza! Still, my back and knees ached with an unaccustomed sharpness, which lessens a little each day.

That said, the inconvenieces of traveling in the 21st century, coupled with the pains attendant to near-middle age, are well worth it for the adventure and foreign culture.

I'm glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed, drying off with fluffy towels, sharing my bathroom with just one person (or three persons, tops), eating abundant, locally grown produce, not needing to ask "do you speak English?" (every Swede does, still...). The cats are finally adjusting to having us home...Nancy, in particular, has required extra strokes, and I'm not surprised since she'd been abandoned. Though sometimes I swear the cats are wondering where that nice girl who feed them each day has gone.

Stockholm sparkled. Seriously. The city is situated on an archipelego in the Baltic. Water pretty much everywhere you look.

And, Visby—what can I say about Visby? This 13th century town is a hidden treasure. Now I understand its popularity among Swedes. We heard an occasional conversation in French or English, but most tourists were Scandinavian. Funny thing? When you remove the language, Swedes look just like Minnesotans. Perhaps that's a Big Duh, but I found it pretty astonishing. The photo captures the view from our room at the top of the house. The skies were amazingly blue like that every day. I shouldn't complain, but sometimes all that sunniness was downright oppressive.

I'd like to report more now, but I simply don't have the energy. In addition to jetlag, I am wrestling with technology. Due to unforeseen circumstances, such as my camera up and disappearing before the trip, we had to use our Olympus Camedia, a first-generation digital camera that still works perfectly well despite the fact that it's over ten years old and its memory cards are completely obsolete. Nonetheless, were able to buy a few cards on Ebay, and unbeknownst to us, they're corrupt. I can see all 186 photos on my camera, but I cannot upload them to any of our computers. Please don't tell my husband I'm having an expensive data recovery done. Now that I think about it, the price is less than what my therapist will charge as if she has to coach me through letting go. As soon as I have photos, I will post them.

Despite jetlag, I am rapidly reentering Real Life...must run Son #1 to drum lessons.

Stay tuned!