There are tailwinds from west to east apparently because our plane rides were slightly shorter on the return trip than when we flew to Australia. It was right at 27 hours coming home when you added the airport time, flights, then the drive back from the airport. Passport and customs on both ends went as smoothly as these things can and there were no delays to speak of on any leg of the trip. As I may have mentioned when making our plans, I was shocked at the cost of business class travel and first class was much worse. On the other hand, a 14-hour flight is a long time to be in coach. What had me in a bind was that the old wide-body configuration with two seats on each side of the plane and four in the middle has apparently fallen out of favor with airplane designers. So, I made the decision to purchase the extra seat in coach and that would give us a little more room. Rather than try and mix two seats for some flights and three for others, I went ahead and did the extra seat for all three legs of going and returning and that still cost us less than buying one business class ticket. Anyway, that did provide us enough space to be relatively comfortable and it was especially nice since almost every flight was full.

Naturally, as it turned out, there was a bit of a jam getting away from the airport as we were on the shuttle going to off-airport parking and that put it close to 10:00 p.m. when we finally arrived home. It was definitely time for a glass of scotch for my husband, wine for me, then a hot shower and tumble into bed. Still a bit jet-lagged, but I think I’ll be in pretty good shape by tomorrow.