Home sweet home

"we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." T.S Elliot

Sorry for the delay in posting, but as many people know from facebook we have arrived back in the cold country! Dealing with jet lag, christmas preparations and much appreciated and loved company has left little time to add this final post. We had to leave Barcelona two weeks early as we found out that to stay until our planned departure meant an increase in travel costs, by about ten thousand dollars! So to stick with budget or schedule was not much of a debate, we chose budget! It turns out that the Catalan/Spanish holidays continue on a bit into January and so we would have still been in prime travel time. So here we are!

It was bittersweet, as I anticipated, something we have planned for and dreamt of for a long time, coming to an end. We travelled back to amsterdam where I decided to go to the Van Gogh museum, Ross came with me and we both really enjoyed it, a must see if you are the least bit interested in art, or Van gogh, he is a personal favorite of mine and I was close to tears being so near his actual palette!
We wandered the streets and ate a dutch donut, a ball of dough deep fried to chewy perfection and sprinkled with icing sugar, mmmm! It was a fun day and Ross and I decided we liked amsterdam a lot more than we originally thought and I am dreaming of a return to the area. We also saw a village with traditional windmills calls Zaan Schans, it isn't a place where people live, more of a museum but it was really cool to see. We had a couple of relaxing days there and then took our flight with iceland air, to Iceland and then on to Edmonton. It was really cool hearing the Icelandic language on the plane and in the airport, made me melancholy. After some lengthy delays due to weather we ended up having to switch a couple flights and rather than make it home in one day it took two, with an overnight in edmonton. It was for a reason though because we got to experience a hotel in Europe and then the next day, Canada. It was great for comparing.

Anyway, we are all settling in, trying to adjust to climate and gratefully spending time with loved ones. We all have plans and goals and are moving on to our next adventures and we have already started saying things like "remember in (insert country here)" it's kind of fun. One more story that really helps explain how I am feeling, on our train ride in to Amsterdam I was looking out in to the dark night and I could see buildings and graffiti as we rumbled through as well as the reflection of my little family in the booths beside me, laughing over something. I felt sentimental as always, and was marvelling at how surreal it all felt and then we rode past a massive white wall, graffiti up and down the sides and then in huge black letters it said "IT WAS ALL A DREAM".

"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list." Susan Sontag