We landed in L.A. early in the morning and stood outside to wait for a shuttle to our hotel, which never arrived. Frustrated and tired, we caught a cab and when we started to get the run-around, i.e., "Which Ramada Plaza? There are many cities and many Ramadas", Barry lost his patience. The driver, pretending to be deeply hurt at Barry's tone, miraculously managed to take us to the right Ramada (the closest one - go figure) and we settled in for a 4 hour sleep.

When the alarm went off, we were all in shock, but we got ready quickly and were at the airport a full hour before departure, only to be told we were late (sighs and eye rolling were involved in the accusation, but we were too tired to get angry). We simply said that our bags were already checked through from the night before, and all we had was carry-on baggage. So they gave us boarding passes and we passed through security without incident.

We boarded the plane and started reading the newspaper. The headlines read that Kenya was in turmoil after its elections, Pakistan was in an uproar over the assassination of their opposition leader, and Australia was flooding in the aftermath of severe storms. We could really relate to all of these world events and our hearts went out to the wonderful people we had met during our journey.

Our flight was delayed while we waited for unaccompanied baggage to be removed from the plane. Eventually, the problem was straightened out and we headed for Calgary. The flight was great and when we landed, the temperature was -6 degrees Celsius and there was only a dusting of snow on the ground. This boded well for the drive home, but the airlines weren't finished with us yet.

We stood around the conveyor belt and watched with sinking hearts as our backpacks failed to appear. We made a lost baggage claim, and then proceeded through customs. That done, we exchanged our remaining money from Australia and the USA and then went to rent a car, praying nothing else would go wrong.

We were originally quoted $300.00 for the 250 km trip to Edmonton International Airport. Luckily Barry had a frequent renter card which dropped the price to $156.00 - still entirely too much. We drove to Barry's parents' house to pick up their unused truck (they're away in Mexico until March) for our first few days home. Then we dropped the rental off at the airport and headed the remaining 10 km to our house. Were we happy to be home? We were just too tired to care at that point.

Sunday 13 January 2008

We are happy to be home. Six months, 25 countries and a million memories later, we cannot believe it is over. Our days since returning home have been filled with putting the house back together, visiting with friends and family, getting ready for school and work, and acclimatizing to Canadian winter.

We are also amazed and grateful for the experience we had. Our blog is complete and we hope to have it made into a hardcover book. Much of our enjoyment came from knowing friends and family were following along. The messages and E-mails always seemed to come on the days we needed them most so, though we didn't always respond, we tucked away the voices in our hearts, happy to know we had a home and friends to return to.

This ends the Lewis Chronicles of 2007, but is only the start of our plans for our next journey.

Lewises out.