Days 10-11: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-jig

 We left our hotel at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday 10/13 and flew from Venice airport to Lisbon, Portugal, where we had a three-hour layover. In late afternoon we boarded our Air Portugal (TAP) plane and settled in for the long flight home. 

Seven or eight hours later we landed at JFK in New York (8:30 p.m. ET), went through customs, and got a shuttle to our hotel (Marriott—$280/night, which is ridiculous, but it was handy and we are splurging; I even drank one of the bottles of sparkling water in our room, though Phil warned me they would charge me for it. They didn’t—I should have drunk the other one too).

After a great sleep in soft beds (finally!) and good pillows (finally!), we boarded our flight to Minneapolis about 7:30 a.m. Neal picked us up from the airport and gave us not only a ride home but a pot of lentil soup for lunch. Dear boy!

So we are back to a chilly 45 degrees and trees that are exploding with color.



We’ve had some frosts but also warm weather and rain, so the flowers are still happy:



My neighbor (Rick, aka Tomato Man) dropped several baskets and buckets of tomatoes and hot peppers over the fence—all the leftover harvest of his garden. So I will spend tomorrow figuring out what to do with this wonderful produce:


And one of the first things I did when we got home (besides checking the garden and making a cup of tea and starting the laundry) was to play this song on the piano.


Because this trip was a gift, from first to last, and we felt God’s guiding and protecting hand over us, two innocents abroad, in every situation. What lovely memories we have, and what a sweet time we had, traveling together. Anyone want to join us for the next trip?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 4: Walking the Canals and Amsterdam History

Image
 Today was beautiful—sunlight, warmth, beauty, and no specific agenda. Here’s what we did: Getting off the #7 tram at Frederiksplein, we walked along the canals to the Amsterdam Museum, reveling in the blue skies and perfect weather. (This promises to be our only sunny day on this trip.) We both felt more spring in our step than yesterday, and the play of light on water was like poetry. Houses along the Amstel River, just past Prinsengracht ( gracht = canal). A fountain in Frederiksplein on our way to the museum. The Prinsengracht continuing past the Amstel. We chose the Amsterdam Museum because the guide book said it had a marvelous presentation of Amsterdam’s history. We did not realize that it was being housed in a temporary location, with most of its original displays in storage. The history portion of the museum was paltry, to put it mildly. Mostly paintings that showed the power and glory of early Amsterdam, with written comments apologizing for the triumphal tone and pride ...
Read more

Day 6: Vondel Park, central Amsterdam, and Venice!

Image
 We had had enough of museums, so today was a walk in the park—Vondel Park, one of the largest in Amsterdam, with lots of walking trails, water, and green space. What a pleasure to walk there after the noisy bustle and crowds of people on buses, in museums and restaurants. The pictures say more than I can: We ate lunch in the park, watched the many dogs frisk and play (great to see them run!), and found a bench on which to read our books. The most relaxing day on our trip. I have to add some pictures of clouds. We’ve seen so many Dutch landscape paintings where the clouds dominate and have a surreal, ethereal quality. I thought it was painterly imagination until I saw that there is a different quality to the light, perhaps due to water vapor in the air coming off the sea. Then we headed out to see Station Centraal, stopping first to visit the Begijnhof, a circle of old and well-preserved houses in a quiet courtyard, where for centuries single and widowed Catholic women lived and wo...
Read more

Day 5: A Full Day at the Rijksmuseum

Image
 I start with a face: I know this girl. I forget her name, but she attended Christian school in Ontario, California. I met her at Hi-Camp in Mt. Hermon as a teenager. The same face, eyes, the same satisfied smile and small cleft in the chin. It is unnerving to see her in a 16th century portrait.  The Dutch portraits scattered throughout various exhibits and time periods in the Rijksmuseum often look familiar to me. They are the faces of my childhood—fellow Dutch-American students at Ripon Christian, children I babysat, elders and deacons at the Christian Reformed Church, elderly women in the Ladies’ Aid Society. Here is a woman who reminded me strongly of my dear Auntie Anne: But let me start at the beginning. We breakfasted at eight o’clock, sneaking out fruit and cheese and rolls for our lunch, then caught the #7 tram to the Rijksmuseum, arriving precisely at 10:00, the time of our reservation (which you do need to get in—no ticket purchases at the door). The museum is an im...
Read more