Sep 4, Travel Home

We left Stockholm on Thursday, September 4, and traveled 14 hours to get home. Our first leg was to London, and after a 2.5 hour layover, to Los Angeles on British Air. They are one of the airlines that still serves food even on a short 2-3 hour trip. Maybe it's just the U.S. airlines that serve no food, charge for bags, meals, pillows, and using the toilet.

In Stockholm the airport has a device that you place your shoes on to see if they will explode. You don't have to take off your shoes, but step on this device one foot at a time. One shoe was fine, but the other shoe had to go through the conveyor belt screening machine.

Dianne took a photo of me with my shoe horn that I carry for just such an occasion.

We arrive in L. A. at 7:30 PM, which for me is 4:30 AM Stockholm time. By the time I get to bed at 11 pm, it would be 8 am in Stockholm, so I've been up for 25 hours straight. Dianne was able to sleep on the plane, but I stayed up so I could sleep when I got home.

I'll need Friday and the weekend to decompress. The trip was a success in that I finished reading three books; two from John Grisham and one on persuasion techniques called Influence by Robert Cialdini.

All of our luggage arrived where it was supposed to when we got to Copenhagen and again when we got home. However, I was given a great tip by a friend of ours. Pack a carry on case with a change of clothes and toiletries. That way if your luggage is lost on the start of your trip you still have clean underclothes and so on. Although we didn't need that, I did meet some other people on the cruise and their luggage arrived days later. One of those people never saw her suitcase.

We set it up for our housekeeper to be here on Friday and do all our dirty laundry. That was a great idea of Dianne's. Now it's back to work.

Rennie