Travel Blog - Traveling back home from Europe

For those who just started following along, I recently re-discovered my old travel blog from my first trip to Europe in the summer of 2014. I wanted to share these entries with you, because it is amazing to look back and reminisce on that trip. [Side note - this was all before I was vegan, so if there is any confusion about that food I was eating, that's why.] Here was my final blog post from that trip.

August 10, 2014;

"We woke up at 7:00am and packed everything up from our hotel room, and got ready for a very long day of traveling. At 7:30, we went to the hotel’s continental breakfast. There was cereal, pastries, bagels, toast, sandwich meats, fruit, eggs, and more. The food was delicious, and I made sure to eat a lot in case I wouldn’t have much time today.

At 8:30am, we took a shuttle bus to the airport with the American family that we met last night. We arrived at the airport, checked our bags, went through security and customs, and arrived at our gate about an hour before our flight boarded. Our first flight left Venice at 11:30am, and arrived in Philadelphia at 3:00pm, so with the time difference it was an 8.5 hour flight. I slept a little, read a little, and watched two movies. Like the flight over to Venice, they served us a hot meal about an hour after getting on the plane. We got pasta with a cheesy pesto sauce, bread, a caprese salad, and a piece of cake. It was actually very good, surprisingly. This flight didn’t seem as long as the flight over to Venice had been.

When we arrived in Philadelphia, we had to go through customs, go to baggage claim and get our luggage, go check our bags again, go through security again (luckily we got TSA Pre-check), and then go to our new gate. When we went through security, we actually saw a girl who Rachel & I used to play soccer with, and went to school with in Maryland. It was such a coincidence.

We had a 3 hour layover, so after we went through security, we went to Legal Seafood. I got shrimp and salad, and my dad got Maryland cream of crab soup, and Rachel got boardwalk fries, which made me miss the food in Maryland like crazy. After we ate, we still had about an hour until our flight boarded, so we sat and charged our phones and waited. It was at this time that I realized I had left my book on the first flight, and since our second flight (6 hours) had no tv’s, reading had been my only plan. I searched the airport stores for a book to read, but I didn’t find any good ones.

When we got on the second flight, I fell asleep right away. This is very surprising, because I normally can’t sleep anywhere but a bed. I slept for the entire flight, waking up occasionally for 10 minutes or so because the turbulence was so bad. Our plane was about 30 minutes late taking off, but we still arrived in Los Angeles right around 9:00pm.

We got off the plane and went to baggage claim right away, and it took forever for our luggage to come. After awhile of waiting for our luggage, the luggage carrousel turned off and we still didn’t have our luggage, along with about 20 other people. Then someone told us that there were about 25 bags at customer service that they had taken off of the luggage carrousel because it was getting too heavy. We get over there, and the only luggage we found was my mom’s. We had to wait in a long line and fill out claims and see if they could find our luggage. They told us that mine, Rachel’s, and my dad’s luggage all stayed in Philadelphia, and was put on the next plane that wouldn’t arrive until 11:30pm, or we could have them dropped off at our house tomorrow. It was about 10:30pm by this point, and we all just wanted to be home, so we went outside and found our shuttle, and were taken home.

It felt like it took forever to get home, even though it was only about half an hour. Now remember, by that point it was about 8:00am Venice time, so our “day” lasted about 24 hours. Seeing my dogs is always my favorite part of coming home from vacation. They were so happy to see us. They were going crazy and barking and jumping all over us and wagging their tails so much. It made me so happy to see them and finally be home after traveling for so long. Hopefully our suitcases do arrive tomorrow like customer service at the airport said they will. For now, I am extremely tired and jet lagged, and I am so happy to be home after such an amazing vacation."