Oregon bound

So, our trip was coming to a close and it was time to start heading back to Oregon... we packed up our things in London, I even tried to pack Paul into my little suitcase, but Morgan ratted me out to Caroline..... :(

It had been a wonderful trip, but I knew it was going to be a long and disjointed journey home.

After just three hours sleep the night before we were packed up and in the car ready to leave my parents place by 4am on the Thursday morning... we flew to Dublin, rented a car and then drove to Laois to my brothers place. We were knackered when we arrived and promptly found a bed to take a nap - ugh.

After the nap and the lunch we sorted through all my luggage so none of it would be overweight and to make sure we could fit everything in. It was a tedious task of adding something to the case and then re-weighing it over and over again, but we got it done and then we packed everything into the car. My goodness, that rental car was packed to the brim... one bike (in a box), five large suitcases, one large size rucksack, one carry on suitcase plus two 'personal item' size carry on bags. We were up to the limit on everything we could bring.

After a fun night out in Tom's Bar that night and another night of getting to bed way too late we got up in the morning, got our last few things together and headed to Dublin. At the airport the check in staff were having issues with my bike. We had been told that we could take it in lieu of a suitcase for no additional charge, but their system was advising them to charge us 200 EURO - YUCK. After much research, several calls and an hour later they finally waived the fee and checked in our bags.

We needed food...

We headed through security and to the lounge and grabbed some snacks and drinks until our flight was called.

Once our flight was called we headed down to the gate through immigration and border control. I'd never flown to the USA from Dublin before, so I don't know if it was a new thing or not but we did our passport and immigration stuff there before we even got on the flight.

We arrived in New York... it was warm, we were tired and we had a ton of bags to lug around. we got some help with our bags and went outside to try and find a taxi that we could squeeze everything and us into.... success.... then we headed to Dave's place.

Driving (or even being driven) in NYC is not a fun experience. It's quite stressful and even a little scary - the drivers are all in a hurry to get somewhere and the driving style is really aggressive! Ugh

After a fun 24 hours (give or take) in NYC we squeezed our stuff back into another taxi (minus the bike which we decided to ship instead of lug around) and headed back to the airport.

By now it was Saturday evening (NYC time) and we were more than ready to be home... we still had a long slog in front of us.

The flight was decent, a little rough in the middle due to a thunder storm but I was so tired I'd fallen asleep before we'd even got off the ground. I was wrecked!

We left JFK about 40 mins behind schedule, but we still ended up arriving in PDX an hour ahead of schedule. We were very glad that Cory's parents had checked the status of the flight and were there to pick us up...

Almost home...

It took about an hour to drive to Cory's parents place, and then we had to unload their car and load everything to our truck, by now I was starting to feel like we would never get home. It was already the wee hours of Sunday morning and I was very eager to get into our bed.

We headed home, I think we were on auto pilot by this stage.....

We unloaded all our stuff into the house, smack bang in the middle of the living room floor. By this time we didn't care where it went, we just needed to get into bed...

I slept so hard that night... it had taken from the wee hours of Thursday morning to the wee hours of Sunday morning to get home... It's safe to say we were both done travelling for a while.