Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2009. To me it captured Mattie's whimsy despite being so sick. Notice the big construction paper roach sitting on the couch next to Mattie. Mind you the roach had a human face!!! Mattie and his art therapists created this creature in clinic, because they knew how much Mattie loved roaches. Mind you, I am not sure Mattie ever saw a live roach, but he knew I hated them and that intrigued him! Any case, Mattie was sitting on the couch with his big roach and in his hand was a huge fly swatter. It became a game that day, I would try to remove the roach from the couch, and Mattie would swat me with the fly swatter if I got close by.
Facts of the Day: Washington Dulles Airport is the largest airport in the Washington Metropolitan Area with over 22 million passengers a year. On a typical day, more than 60,000 passengers pass through Washington Dulles to and from more than 125 destinations around the world. It was named after John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower. The main terminal was designed in 1958 by famed Finnish architect Eero Saarinen and it is highly regarded for its graceful beauty, suggestive of flight.
Today was an absolutely endless day. We woke up at 6am to finish packing and to disembark the Crown Princess Ship by 8am. We have been on Mediterranean time for the past two weeks, which is six hours ahead of Washington, DC. Though it is 8:45pm on Saturday, for me it feels like 2:45am! Therefore, I am not sure what I will be writing tonight or if I will even be coherent! As I sit to write tonight's blog, I can't believe that in two weeks time, Peter and I traveled over 14,000 miles. In a way it was like going around half of the world!!!
For the past two days at sea, we slowly moved away from the beautifully sunny and glorious weather of the Mediterranean and headed into the Atlantic Ocean bound for Southampton, England. When we docked in England at the crack of dawn today, it was around 60 degrees, overcast, and cloudy! Mind you all the Brits on the Ship thought today was a great weather day for England! We found out that there were ONLY 140 Americans on our Ship, a Ship that hosts 3500 passengers. In a way, though we toured the Mediterranean, I felt like I spent a great deal of time in England on this trip! I guess because I was surrounded by Brits in our floating city.
Once we docked in Southampton, we took a car to London's Heathrow airport. That took us close to two hours to drive. Fortunately we did not have much down time to linger at Heathrow. I personally do not enjoy waiting for hours on end in an airport, maybe because it just builds up my level of anxiety about flying. However, I would have to say if I had to be stuck in an airport, you can leave me at Heathrow any day. It is an airport with class, from its stores to its restaurants. There is even a mini Harrods store at the airport! On long flights, I rarely eat on an airplane, so therefore, I suggested to Peter that we eat something at Heathrow. We sat at a café and check out what was on every table!!!!!!!!!! That's right FRESH herbs. The table we sat at had mint, but others had rosemary, basil, and thyme! When we boarded our United plane, I was stunned to see that they changed the type of plane we were using. Originally we were scheduled to have a large 777 and because of the low passenger count they changed our plane to a one aisle 757. Which means that I sat between two people! I assure you such changes aren't good for a person who has airplane anxiety! To add insult to injury, I learned that today's flight was going to be extra long because we were flying into tail winds. So in total, I was trapped in an airplane for 8 hours and 40 minutes. When I heard the captain announce our flight time, I started screaming at Peter. Basically because I assumed he knew the flight time and didn't want to tell me. Because most likely if he told me, I am not quite sure I would have gotten on the plane. Peter is used to my airplane issues, so nothing I do surprises him on this front. But once the airplane doors were locked, there wasn't anything I could do. So I had to develop a strategy! I literally was up and alert for the entire flight and glued to either a tv show or movie. I am normally not so electronically focused but I needed mental diversions to maintain some sort of level of sanity for this LONG time period. To top it off, there was a woman sitting in front of us who spoke SO loud, you thought she was on a microphone. But it only got more funny. This woman had two children on the plane, her mother, father, and husband. Her two children and husband were sitting five rows behind all of us. Yet when she wanted to communicate with them, she would start screaming down the aisle. She became a true nuisance and finally a flight attendant had a chat with her. But I can't say that made much of a difference! Her behavior perplexed me and then I met her children, who also talked and screamed at the same decibel level! I told Peter these apples did not fall far from the tree!
Any case, we are home and somewhat unpacked. I am not sure when I will acclimate to DC time, but one thing is for sure, when I stepped off the airplane and could feel DC's humidity, I was one happy camper! I love DC summers and I am so happy that we came back to a sunny day with high humidity!
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