Returning Him to His Parents

Madrid Airport from the plane

We got on the plane and took off in due course. A lot of the Espania 2008 kids that we had flown over with were on this return flight too

Although my daughter said they weren't going to feed us, they did in fact feed us lunch and then another lunch as we got to Miami.

The first lunch was kind of nasty -

Beef and gravy

which my grandson didn't want, and

Pasta and vegetables

and stuff in it, which he also didn't want, a roll, cole slaw which wasn't very good and a small piece of cheesecake. The only thing he liked was the roll, so I gave him mine. He had a couple of cokes, but I was worried that he would be hungry. When I peeled the cover off the beef and gravy, it flipped up and got gravy on my shirt.

We browsed through the Sky Mall magazine and he showed me stuff he liked, and I read the regular magazine which had an article on the St. Mary's Co. Oyster Festival. They showed two movies, and I slept through the first one.

We got the second lunch about 1 pm Miami time. It was pizza,

Pizza for lunch

but it had mushrooms in it and he didn't like those, and also large grapes with seeds which he also didn't like. He ate his pizza after picking out most of the mushrooms, and about three grapes. So I ate the filling out of my pizza and gave him the crust - it was one of those big thick crusts. He gave me his cookie, which he also said he didn't want.

After lunch my grandson did the sukado in the flight magazine and I did the crossword. He finished first.

Miami Beach

As we came in over Miami, I observed power boats making circular wakes below us.

Boats doing donuts

His cell phone had no battery life in it when we were on the ship and I told him to recharge it in Venice, but he didn't. Apparently he did it while we were in Madrid because as soon as we landed, he texted his mom, and she said she would meet us outside of Customs. So we went through immigration fairly rapidly (he now has two stamps in his new passport - both from Madrid), and handed in the customs form, and claimed the bags.

We were one of the first ones down to the baggage carousel and I was sitting and he was standing next to it. People kept trying to get their bags off of it, and not being able to lift them and being carried around towards us and crashing into my grandson as they tried to get their bags. The baggage carts are free in Europe, but here you pay for them, so we didn't get one. My daughter picked us up right away and we went to watch the last part of my granddaughter's tennis lesson.

Granddaughter's Tennis lesson

picking up tennis balls

When my grandson told his mom a lot about his experiences, I found out a lot that I hadn't actually known about - particularly about his time on the ship when he wasn't with me. I found this very interesting.

When we got home, I called Bob, and printed out my boarding pass and we shared our photos with the rest of the family. Also my grandson gave his sister the pink dolphin that squealed when you pressed the fin that he bought her in the Aquarium.

April 8, 2008

I'm flying home today. My daughter dropped me at the airport to curb check my luggage ($2)

checking in to go back home

Curb Check

and asked the skycap to get me a wheelchair, which he did. I went to a kind of corral and eventually a lady came to push me to security. Then they had a hard time finding a golf cart to take us to the gate (D45).

Had a reasonable flight back.

taking off from Miami

Florida coastline

Landing at BWI

I got my luggage and Bob picked me up a couple of minutes after I went out to the curb with my luggage

and we drove home

In the Summer of 2008, we made a couple of trips on our boat, and our oldest granddaughter was married.

Then in November we took a cruise Back and Forth Through the Panama Canal