HOME SWEET HOME.

We are updating this post to acknowledge the additional comments we received after we posted.

Doris...Yes we were very lucky to avoid getting ill during the voyage.  Thank you for your nice comments and for following our postings.

Joy...Thank you for following our posts and for the very nice comments.

Eileen...Thank you for your comments.  It's nice to be home.

Originally posted May 22

Thank you Catherine, Karin, Jo Ann, Mary, Howard, Kathryn, and Theresa for your comments.

We are now home as we arrived back to our house before 6:00 PM last evening.  

The overall day and flight home went well.

After we posted we relaxed at the British Airways lounge before we made our way to the gate.  

​For fans of  the National Football League,  Anne Marie helped out former Dallas Cowboys  Quarterback by showing him where an outlet is located for his electronic gear.  She  recognized him on her own without  help from Keith.  😀 Then again she used to see him at a Hallmark Store where we previously  lived from time to time.  Many years ago Keith sat next to him from a flight from Washington, DC to Dallas  when he was returning  from  Washington after the Cowboys were recognized at  the White House for winning the Super-Bowl.
 
Now  if Keith could just see Paul McCartney that would make his day.  😁   
 
The good news is that our flight took off on-time and we arrived early.  With Global Entry we went through immigrations/customs quickly and we had a vehicle to take us home arranged by Crystal Cruises.

We each watched several movies and between the movies and food the time passed quickly.  These are photos from the lunch.  They served a tea but didn't take photos of that and snacks were available but we didn't need any of that.
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The good news is that during the course of the adventure we didn't get sick which is a challenge when sailing during the winter months and in vessels, hotels, airplanes and just surrounded by people.  We were proactive and as we have mentioned we did avoid some situations where there were lots of crowds.  This did mean that we didn't participate in some areas as we have done in the past, but as they say "you do what you have to do".  Again this is not easy when you travel and the odds no matter what we did we would get sick.  

We have a challenging time ahead in a couple of months. If all goes well we will begin a new adventure later this year. Please check back in mid-December as we get ready for the start of our next adventure.

Happiness to all.

Cheers,

Anne Marie & Keith

ON OUR WAY HOME - AN ADVENTURE MIGHT END BUT THE MEMORIES LAST  A LIFETIME

Thank you Betty for  your nice  thoughts and for following along all these months.  The time does go  by quickly  which is why we try to  enjoy each day and not  look ahead.  At the start of the trip people would ask if we  were looking forward to our first River Cruise.  We would say yes but trying not to think about it as it would mean the ocean vessel portion of the adventure was over.

Thank  you Theresa.   Sounds  like we did miss out on the muffins but might have been a good choice for our waistline.  LOL.  

We thought this title was fitting as we make our way back home.   There was a song by The Beatles (you know we love The Beatles) sung by Paul McCartney and John Lennon originally called We're on our way home before it became Tow Of Us.  We like the lyrics and enjoy how they are singing to one another. 

We are at the conclusion of another amazing adventure. As they say all good things must come to an end or as The Beatles sang "All good things must pass". .

We have visited places for the  first time, returned to locations  we have previously  visited, and experienced so much at sea and on land.  We have laughed.  We  have teared up when we visited the concentration camp and felt lots of emotion as Keith did the Jewish tour. We have increased our knowledge about world events.  We have grown.  We have seen things through our own eyes and not the lens of a camera.  We have met several guests for the  first time and we have renewed friendships.  We  have seen  our family who are presently in Australia and kept up with our family back in the States.    We have created memories which will last for  the rest of our lives.  We  have sailed on a River Cruise for the first time and we  achieve 100+ Crystal Society Milestones during this adventure.  We have now sailed the equivalent of four years.

We hope our narrative and photos have conveyed much of what we experienced  the past five+ months.  

There is so much to see around the world and we remind ourselves that our home country and home areas represent only  a portion of  the world.  The world is full of diversity and that makes us all that much better if we take  the time to learn from  others  about the cultures around the world.  

There  is so  much going  on around the world  and our  concern is in our home  country is sometimes we miss  it as the news is too single focused.  We have  shared what is happening with investments by China in  places such  as Africa and we have seen first hands  issues related to the global environment.   These are some of the  benefits of travel.
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We enjoyed our last night  of the cruise at the Sofitel Hotel at London Heathrow Airport  The first night of our adventure began at a hotel airport for our local airport so it was  fitting that the last night end  at an airport  hotel.  We enjoyed our final dinner of this trip and toasted  our love for each other and our love and appreciation  of travel.  

Dinner was not three or four courses as we enjoyed on Serenity and Mozart.  We kept to two courses; salad and a salmon entree.   If we would have realized the entree came with French Fries we would have asked for something else   Oh well.  We  survived.

We read and wrote before we went to sleep and awoke early  for our final day away from home.   After getting ready  we went down  to the lobby of the  hotel where we could check in for our flight and drop off our luggage.  This is a  new service which British Airways  offers  at the hotel which began six months ago.  We had  no waitt.  Since   our bags were large  they asked us (Keith) to place each bag on a luggage scale and to read off the weight.   We were given  our boarding passes. From there we walked the long corridor and took the elevator up four floors and entered terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport.  

We went through passport control, through security and made our way  to the British Airways Club Lounge.  We didn't get stopped for extra checks as two people directly in front of us did.  They did do one extra check on Anne Marie's 3-2-1 bag.

We just finished  breakfast  at the lounge.   We kept  this  to the  same breakfast you  are familiar with by now; cereal  and a  banana. LOL.   They had  a full service menu  with table service.

We will be here another few hours before we fly  home across the pond.

We will post in a few days following our  return to  home.

We hope  you  have  enjoyed following our  adventure.

We have a challenging time ahead in a couple of months.  If all goes well we will  begin a new adventure later this  year.  Until then:

Be well and enjoy life to it fullest extent and look for the good and don't dwell on those things that don't go as well as you would like.  Remember, life is like a book and each of us does not know when that last chapter will be written.

Cheers,

Anne  Marie  &  Keith