Epilogue – Returning Home

We got a taxi to the Athens airport. Despite it being an international flight, we didn’t even have to check in in-person and had our mobile boarding passes ready. Security wasn’t even that bad. It felt so wrong that everything was going so smoothly. We remembered back to the first flights of our trip when we needed all kinds of paperwork like COVID tests, proof of insurance, health affidavits, etc. Now: nothing. Only one person even looked at our passports.

As a precaution, we had arrived at the airport way too early. So we killed some time in duty free. We were a little worried about buying wine because we would have to go through security again in Oslo. But the duty free lady assured us that if she sealed the bag it would be fine.

Then we decided to get some dinner. One of the places had a deal of draft beer and hot dog for €8. It felt like the right meal for our send off from Europe. And it was delicious indeed.

The flight from Athens to Oslo was on Norwegian airlines. They claim that, Norse, a subsidiary, is their budget airline and different than Norwegian, but Norwegian was pretty budget too. We didn’t sit together because to pick seats would’ve cost extra. I had the duty free bag with wine under my seat and could barely fit anything else. Then the carefree young woman (Gen Z!) next to me fell asleep and had the audacity to spread her leg and bag onto my tiny side. I was so done with traveling.

We landed in Oslo just before 2am. There is one 24-hour restaurant there so we got an orange juice and a hot chocolate. The airport was completely wood and tile floors and most of the seats had arm rests so you couldn’t lay down across them. So we camped on the padded benches in the restaurant. I’m not sure that we slept at all but then at 5:30 am we had a gate for our flight so we went to board.

We didn’t end up having to go through security. But we did go through immigration because we would be leaving Europe. The man asked us when and where we entered Europe. We said, “Italy…a month ago?” and then I had to look it up on my detailed planning calendar to confirm. He looked at us confused. He asked if we had been to Budapest. Oh, that’s right! Technically we had entered through Budapest. We apologized for being sleep deprived and he didn’t seem to care, he just stamped our passports and moved us along. So our passport stamps say Hungary and Norway, even though we spent less than 5 hours in either.

Despite being a 10 hour flight, meals were not included and would have cost $30. So we got two sad looking sandwiches in the Oslo airport for $20. They were weird, but at least we didn’t go hungry.

Again Carl and I weren’t sitting next to each other. When I found my seat I discovered it was between a mom and her 5-year old son. I looked at them like, ‘don’t you want to move over?’ But instead the mom got up to allow me to sit in the middle. I had to move the boy’s fleecy blanket in order to sit. He started playing a video game on his iPad at full volume. I looked at him, then at her, and then I ever so politely asked, “would you like to sit together?” She said, “no thanks.” So I tried to text Carl about how hilariously terrible this was, without her seeing.

As people boarded, the mom pointed out that the flight would likely be pretty empty. She explained it had been empty on the way over. Then I realized the dad and daughter were sitting in front of us, also with kid at the window and parent in the aisle. The dad turned around and told me the flight looked empty and I could probably move seats. So I took the hints and gathered up all my belongings from under the middle seat, and went to the other side of the plane where Carl had grabbed us our own row. I can see what the mom was trying to do but geez why did she have me sit in the middle? even for only 5 minutes?

Carl and I watched the movie Belfast and then I found my very own row and laid down to sleep. I wrapped my thin tie-dyed scarf around me like a blanket because the plane was freezing but blankets cost extra. Before we landed I moved back to Carl’s row. He had watched another movie so I knew he didn’t have as much sleep as me. We watched a couple episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and then, before we knew it, we had landed in LAX 40 minutes early.

Carl’s mom, Lisa, generously picked us up from the airport. She is the one who let us store all our stuff in her garage AND watched our precious baby, Bubba, the whole time we were away. Picking us up from LAX during morning rush hour traffic was the cherry on top of the giant cupcake of incredible nice things she has done for us. After our long, sleepless journey, we could barely form sentences so we were especially grateful to have such VIP curbside pick up for our return home.

In-and-out wasn’t open yet so we went to a breakfast burrito spot that Lisa likes. We shared two different kinds – one with machaca and beans and one with chorizo and hash browns. Both were so good. We had Jarritos to drink. They even had a salsa bar and I nearly cried because I had missed California so much.

Once Carl had finished his burrito he realized that hunger was the only thing keeping him awake and he nearly passed out on the table. So we went back to Lisa’s house.

When we walked in, Bubba was sitting in the first room just staring at us. We went for pets and he walked away like, “whoa, you just got here” but in a few minutes he warmed up again and I was head nuzzling him in no time. I missed him so much!!

We dropped off our bags in ‘our room’ and, at first, said we never wanted to wear our travel clothes again. But, before we had left for our international adventure we had moved all of our stuff from DC to Southern California and left it all in boxes in Lisa’s garage. We had kept out clothes that we needed for Christmas time and our travels, and packed away the rest. Now we realized that we had no readily accessible clothes for warm weather, except our travel clothes, and there is a heat wave for SoCal this week with temperatures expected to go up to 110F. So, we washed and dried our shorts and tank tops to wear while we dig through the garage.

Carl took a little nap and I hung out with Bubbs and tried to get my mind around the fact that we were home.

We had been on such a great adventure that it was difficult to remember it all. We visited 17 countries in 8 months. We saw so many of the wonders of the world (depending on which list you follow): Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the Great Pyramids of Giza, Petra, and the Colosseum. We swam in the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean, hiked through the Colombian Amazon, marveled at the Bolivian salt flats, walked on the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, partied at the biggest Full Moon Party in Thailand (biggest since before COVID), dove with thresher sharks, whale sharks, reef sharks, turtles, and Humphead parrotfish.

We reunited with friends in South Korea and made so many new friends along the way. We tread on dirt in Australia that only a handful of people have ever seen, and also slipped on marble steps in Rome that have been worn from centuries of foot traffic. We had set out for a worldwide tour and had accomplished even more than we planned (and way exceeded our budget!)

While we were traveling I started a list of things that I missed about the U.S. Because, sure, we are politically divided, and access to health care or safe abortion aren’t rights while owning an AK47 is, BUT it is home and there are some wonderful things about this country.

First on my list is getting the bill at the end of the meal, without asking. Dining out anywhere else in the world you have to ask for the bill and it can be so painful to wait for the waiter to notice you or to have to wave them down. This is a silly cultural difference, but it’s what I missed most.

Also I missed CVS. Not just CVS but stores like CVS that just sell all the little random things you might need. Like sometimes you need Bobby pins and chips and a writing pad and sunglasses and it is so convenient to get these all from the same place. I had spent the last month of our trip going into random pharmacies in tourist towns, praying there would be travel sized dry shampoo and I never did find any.

And of course we missed our IPAs: hazy for Carl, west coast style for me.

For dinner we treated Lisa to sushi at a local place that she likes, the first of a lifetime of meals that we will treat to try and thank her for caring for Bubbs. We got some Sapporos and a few rolls and had spicy scallop hand rolls for desert. It was really good. When our plates were empty the waitress asked if we wanted anything else and we said, “no thank you” and then she brought us the check.

…

I plan on writing a few ‘tips and tricks’ posts for specific places, in case we can help anyone to avoid our mistakes or to get the most out of an experience like we were able to. But because we are not traveling anymore, we are going to stop blogging about our day-to-day activities, for now. It’s amazing to hear how many people are out there following this blog, which started only as a way to keep our moms updated. I wish we could keep traveling and blogging (maybe even turn it into a career?) but for now our true passions of medicine and disaster management are calling to us.

From our trip we hope to keep and apply the lessons of going with the flow and having better work-life balance. We plan on using up all our vacation time and even taking unpaid leave so we can keep traveling in the years to come. When we set off again, we will dust off the blog again. Thanks to everyone that followed our incredible journey. Now we’d love to follow you back and read about your travels!