I still need to share mu stories of the coast, I suspect the delay has to do with these being some of the hardest moments to blog about. Wonderful times, true exhale moments that involve waves, a sunset, throwing five of my precious dogs ashes into the wind for their final resting place...but the sad moments of having to say bye to people I have loved dearly and will never see again.
But this post is about my journey home, and how I am convinced the wonderful Camino experience would include these hours at the airport and on the plane.
I can think of no vacation,trip, or travel that took this long to get home from destination. I had left Muxia at six AM on Friday and was not in my families embrace until four PM Saturday (ten PM Spain time).
The flight from Spain to Paris was a quick one...I would land about ten PM and had to check into my morning flight at about five AM, it would make no sense to stay anywhere else but the airport. I purchased access to twenty four hours of airport WIFI to get me thru the night, and only hoped I would be able to get some sleep.
I found myself a nice area with four chairs to position myself...alone ...
Within thirty minutes an elderly lady approached me, she was the spitting image of my hubby's mother in a caucasian form (hubby is Pacific Islander). Like Steve's mom she appeared to be a unique character, Steve's mom died a few years ago and while I kind of wanted to be alone at the airport to sleep I welcomed this woman thinking it was his mother approaching me. As she approached me I gradually pulled out my IPad t to email to Steve, "your mom in a caucasian form is toddling over to me as I sit here...". Their similarities would grow over the next seven hours together, and I would wonder many times if this was really happening, and if she was being to sent to me with reason. I would realize quickly that this fascinating woman was very eccentric but also VERY smart. She shared she was up for a Nobel Prize and not knowing much about that process I would gave to look into it some to totally understand that BUT our conversation was fascinating. She was from Israel , had worked in the "Kiev region" of Ukraine (ends up right near Cherkassy where my sons are from). Someone told her that Florida was a nice place to live so she was heading there to check it out.
I would take about three forty minute naps this night at the airport. I boarded my flight to London without incident in the morning and an hour time change would make my layover three hours. I was put in a middle seat and after my long flight over in a middle seat I was slightly disgruntled BUT this would only be about an hour and I could deal. I'm glad I lost my disgruntled way quickly as I was sitting next to a very nice businessman from England who lived in Texas. A nice family man destined to massive air travel for long periods of time. We had a wonderful conversation about our lives and as we landed he shared he is a million mile traveler with our shared Airline, his frequent flier number is below number 100 given out and thus he easily qualifies for the Airline lounge experience. He asked, knowing I have had little luxury in seven weeks if I wanted to be his guest in the lounge. I jumped at this opportunity, I felt uncomfortable walking in there with my pilgrim garb, but he was in shorts which helped. Once in there A full bar was available, fruit, pastry yogurt...almost anything in endless supply. I got to order an eggs Benedict and thought I had died and gone to heaven. He then said, there are showers here too if you want one (before I got to self conscious I had told him about the bath and stranger story already so he was just adding to the experience). At first I thought I couldn't do that as I had no clean clothes to get into ( I had checked my backpack and was hands free). Then I jumped at the opportunity an experience in a beautiful shower with white fluffy towels and bamboo comb. With wet hair I would leave to board my next plane.
I'm not certain I will ever fly American airlines international again, the planes are just as comfortable as others. We do have a fun story about flying American overseas and we think of it often, eight years ago when coming home with our two oldest sons from Ukraine Steve was standing in line for the restroom on the plane and a man asked him his ethnicity. When Steve shared the conversation of good food came up, we have been invited to many parties I am convinced due to his famous ponsit recipe. So this came up and the head flight attendant stopped and turned into the conversation and said out loud, " I have had your ponsit at Deborah M's Christmas part". From that second on we were served ice cream, given bottles of wine and felt a little special. So on THIS flight home I thought that one of our flight attendants was this same lady. I waited till The opportunity presented itself and asked her, " Do you know Deborah M", at which it appeared she didn't and I felt pretty stupid even having asked such a random question. I could tell her mind was turning and she came back to me and literally said ," keep talking...tell me more...I feel like I should be saying YES". I then said that right years ago we were flying over the Atlantic and the conversation of a dish my hubby makes came up and...(I felt so stupid even sharing the conversation) she enthusiastically said," Yes...that was me..." And went on to describe us and she even remembered we were coming home with two new sons. She hooked me up the rest of the flight and I came home with Champagne. This time we exchanged contact information.
I sat in the center section that hekd only three seats, I had an aisle seat, the center seat was empty and an older gentleman sat in the other aisle seat, sadly we shared not a word till our last ninety minutes or so...my loss as we ended up having a GREAT conversation. He had never heard of the Camino before but has been itching for some adventurous physical trip, he wasn't just saying that he was rattling off numerous adventures that you hear among some of the Camino folk. Here this man has the time (few Americans do) and the desire to do something like the Camino. He was so anxious to hear every detail... He was the perfect Camino candidate and I have no doubt will be on trail within twelve months .
As for me...planning Camino number two with three oldest children in ten and a half months.
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