Finland; the ninth day
Posted by: Aulikki, 09.17.2008Morning came early, we had the alarm set for 5 am, then packed and loaded the car and off we were to the airport. Returning rental car and check-in was easy, we had time for a quick breakfast and to shop for last minute impulse purchases, and the plane took off in time.
It is tough to travel back across the Atlantic during the daytime hours ? it is hard to get any sleep. We had a 4-month old baby in front of us and she was an angel, never heard her fuss, but across the isle behind us was a Swede, who had about ten Bud Lights, and was very loud and disturbing everyone else.
We were in time arriving in Philadelphia, but we needed to take our luggage through US customs, and that was a long nightmare. We ended up losing the smoked moose and reindeer meat we bought in Stockholm. Then we were hurrying to our gate just find out that the plane is late. We ended up leaving an hour late, which would put us late for our connecting flight to Tri-Cities.
When we arrived to Charlotte we had 10 minutes to catch our flight. Paul took off running and I rushed right behind him, only to find out after all that running that the Tri-cities plane was late too. After we had time to catch our breath, we found several of our friends waiting for the same flight.
We arrived Tri-Cities about 8:30 pm and were anxious to pick up our dog Sophie from the kennel. We arrived home at 9:15 pm exhausted and had Chinese take-out for dinner, I do not even try to remember what wine we had.
It really took us two days to get over the jet lag. But the trip was all worth it. Luckily we had couple days to settle down, before going back to the store. It was an awesome trip. Again, million thanks to Tanya and Kathy for taking care of the store for us — this was our first real vacation in the five years we have been in business!
