Today is a day of travel. That's it. I scheduled our limo driver from yesterday to meet as the hotel at 7:30am to take us to Schipol Airport. My original plan was an €8 trip for us on the train but not with this luggage. Up this morning at 6, we're down in the hotel lobby, luggage stacked, bill paid and ready to eat breakfast at 7. According to my paperwork, the breakfast is free here but the attendant says no. I'm not hungry anyway with such a short time to eat so I opt out on paying. I don't even ask how much. He feels bad and says take some free coffee which we do. While we're getting the coffee, he comes to us and says to eats whatever we want. I just want to get going so we accept the coffee and wait for our car. It's right on time. We load in the bags and off for the 30 minute ride.

He drops us off right at Delta and with Priority Plus, we check in within 5 minutes. Through immigration, security and customs and we wait at the gate..the flight is 7 1/2 hours to Minneapolis, then another 3 1/2 hours to SFO. A direct flight was the same price but Mom liked the idea of breaking up the flight. Our seats are at the bulkhead and just two in our rows. We try to sleep but neither of us can so we watch movies, play games, listen to music, whatever to pass the time. The "November Man" was good.

In Minneapolis, we have to go through immigration and customs, this being our first entry point into the US. We retrieve our luggage off the carousel, take it through customs, then put it on another conveyor to our next plane. I was worried we wouldn't have enough time to do all of this in the two hours since we were 1/2 hour late arriving but this airport is really organized and all went well. On this flight, we in are in 3 seat rows and I have this football player next to me and a screaming kid a few rows ahead that never shuts up. This flight was much harder to deal with but we made it and landed 4:30pm in San Francisco.

Karen's bother, Milan, picked us up and got us home by 6pm. No big problems here after three weeks. Lots of leaves and branches from the storms lying around but that's it. It's been almost 24 hours since we last slept so we're anxious to get to bed

It's been a challenging adventure. Certainly not relaxing, the grueling schedule of trains, hotels and markets was tough but rewarding nevertheless. Karen has some nice things to remember this by. The jury is out on the river cruise. I enjoyed it but I think her comparison between ocean and river cruising is not fair. They're totally different and I would do either again. Karen managed to move pretty well on this trip, despite her set back last May that landed her in the hospital for a few weeks. Lots of walking, climbing and stress didn't bother her but I know she's looking forward to a more relaxing destination next time. Maybe Hawaii.