We made it home!

We had a WONDERFUL trip, but it is always so good to be back home. Hanna was an amazing little traveler, everyone I was with (including me) couldn't believe how good she was! She slept the whole flight to London, and was awake as soon as we got there. We Started our trip in London and had an amazing time there. We were all SO tired when we got there, well except Hanna because she slept all the way there, but we hit the road running. While we were in London we went out to Stonehenge, it's not more that 60 miles away, however it took FOUR hours to get there, it took three hours just to get out of London, traffic was a nightmare. We also went to Bath and saw the old Roman Baths, it was really fun! We then took the Euro star through the tunnel to Paris and spent 3 days there.

Oh, funny story.....the first day we were in Paris we were sitting on the stairs of a church waiting for the rest of our group to gather and this old lady comes up to us and in a mix of English and French wants to know who's baby she is. My mother-in-law, Rhonda, had Hanna, and so I said I'm the mom, and she's the grandma. She then starts into me about watching her....make sure you watch her, no popcorn, no popcorn. I'm thinking WHAT THE HECK....of course I'm not going to give the kid popcorn she has no teeth! She just kept going on that like for a minute or two and then she starts to make a puffy face and bring her arms out.....she was telling me to make sure I don't make my kid fat! I thought it was hysterical!! The woman was out of her mind, she was telling me ALL American kids are fat so I needed to watch mine to make sure I didn't give her popcorn to make her fat! I was laughing so hard, honestly, who does that!!! The tour director, David, finally figured out what she was saying and told her in French that it wasn't okay to talk to people like that and she left.

From Paris we took an overnight train to Milan. Now, I've never been on an over night train to anywhere, so I really had no idea what to expect from this little journey of ours. There are 6 people to a little room type thing. Three beds on each side. All six people in there are taking luggage with them, so luggage has to go somewhere in there. Now imagine the kind of space you'd need for that.....and it's WAY smaller than anything you could EVER imagine. The beds when not folded down make a seat, three on each side of the little car/room/whatever it's called. I've got pictures, however I don't think they did justice to the smallness of this little space. We left Paris about 6pm and got into Milan just before 6am. We had to hang out at the train station for 2 hours till our bus driver came to get us. Our little car was SO hot, the air in our car didn't work, it worked just fine in other cars, just not our. I decided not to fold down the bed so that Hanna could sleep in her car seat on the seat, since the space between the beds/seats wasn't wide enough for her car seat to sit on the floor. It was a really LONG night. I slept curled up on my side because Hanna was at my feet, I kinked my neck funny, and once again, it was HOT! But we made it to Milan and spent the day in the city before heading out to our hotel that was outside of the town.
From Milan we went to Venice, once again, a blast! We took the boat over early in the morning so we had much of the day to do whatever we wanted there. Well......it was WAY too much time, we ended up getting lost on the island for like an hour, it was SO hot I thought we'd die! The museums were not even cool. In St Mark's Square there are a zillion pigeons that hang out, I thought it would be fun to run through the whole flock of them, just to see what they'd do. I'd have to say that it was pretty funny! Then I remembered that I had a pack of smashed crackers in my bag, so what the heck, lets feed the pigeons! Yeah.....they flew into me, ate them right out of my hand, but let me tell you I've never laughed so hard in my life!
From Venice we went to Florence, once we got to the hotel, like at 8pm, I decided it was time once again to do laundry, I was getting desperate and doing laundry in the sink just doesn't do it for me! I asked the front desk where the nearest laundry place was and they told me it was close, a 10 minute walk from the hotel. So a few of us set out, I left Hanna with Grandma and Aunt Kimberlee in exchange for their laundry that needed to be done. Well, their short 10 minute walk was no 10 mins, it took us about half an hour, it was down a dark alley with boarded up building. When we found the place and got started 3 or 4 men started staking out the place. They sat right out side the door and would come in, and then leave again, they each took turns doing that. We pretty much risked our lives for clean clothes!
Our trip ended in Rome, we had a very exciting time and I loved every minute of our trip! I nursed Hanna all over Europe and became a pro and walking and nursing, I felt bad making everyone stop just so I could feed her, so I just figured out how to do it while we were moving. I was so very proud of myself! She was so wonderful, happy to let others hold her and talk to her. The flight home was a little bit of an adventure. I had a hard time getting Hanna on the plane with me, they kept asking for her paper ticket, we had no paper ticket, they were all e-tickets. After about half an hour of chatting with them we got it figured out, kinda. One most of the flights they had Hanna sitting away from me, like 12 rows in front of me. I had asked them to fix it, but that just caused more problems! We found people on the plane who were more than happy to switch seats with Hanna so she could sit with me. Our first leg of flight was a 9 hour flight from Rome to Dulles, she only slept about 3 hours of that flight but was pretty happy other wise. The second leg was supposed to be about 3 1/2 hours, but ended up being around 7. We love delays in Denver! I guess there was some lightening so they wouldn't let us land, so we circled for a while, ran low on fuel and had to go to Colorado Springs where we sat on the plane for an hour! When we finally got to Denver we were exhausted, being up nearly 24 hours and we were starving! Our flight into SLC had been delayed till 11:30!! So we didn't get in until a little after 1 am, for a grand total of 30 hours of traveling! I was exhausted but excited to be home!