SATURDAY - BACK TO THE UK

Ended up at Heathrow early (though this ultimately was not a blessing) and went into T5 which is an excellent terminal. Shiny, new and organised with the best toilets of the trip. On the way into the baggage reclaim, Nik joked "I can see our bags already", and then when we got to the bottom of the stairs, we already could see our bags - the first ones going around the conveyor by themselves having survived the changeover. This meant we were out the airport and at the tube station in the blink of an eye. Ordinarily we would have been overjoyed, but this meant we were seriously early for the train to Hannah's parents. Even with the slowness of the tube, we were at Victoria at 7am for a train at 8.50 - more waiting was just what we needed after the giant journey! You might ask why we didn't just get a train earlier - well paying an extra £50 for more tickets after having pre-booked cheapie ones was not an option for us povo's. Killed a bit of time however as the card machine wouldn't give Hannah the tickets she had pre-booked so we had to queue up. Then we realised we spent all our English money on the tube tickets so had to get more out, and the ATM was broken. Then we got breakfast, billed as 'Hot Bacon or Sausage Rolls', and they were cold. So then we went to the refuge of Starbucks for a Chai Latte until train time.

Train journey was fine, an extra hour and twenty minutes after our escapades was nothing, and despite being delirious with tired, we managed to get on the right bit of train (unlike two grown women who only realised at Worthing that they weren't at Hastings, even though the train guard told them to move when we got on). We also survived the final backpack trundle to mum and dad's - motivated by the home comfort of the terrible cup of tea mother would soon make us.

Being home was very strange as everything was exactly the same, other than the weather, which was decidedly warmer than when we left. Regaled the parents with adventure stories for a few hours and had tea and danishes. Hannah did unpacking while Nik lounged in the bath, and then we swapped over thus ensuring that all the boring post travel stuff was done. Having a nice, long, hot bath was amazing and made us look and feel human again, except it was only after getting out of the bath, that Hannah noticed her legs had turned into doner kebabs. They had been a bit numb on the flights and felt a bit funny, but apparently Hannah had not noticed them blowing up into the size of giant hams. Despite this, Hannah forced her jeggings on. In fact, we both had a field day putting on different clothes. Nik was happy to have a wife that dressed like a female again.

Pretty much just as we finished the humanising process, the Grace family appeared, having come round to collect the dog as they just got back this morning from their trip to America. It was very nice to see them all and crazy how big the kids had grown up in just a few months. We all did some gift swapping, which always goes down well! After a few hours basking in the sun, the remaining family turned up in the form of Charlotte and Roy, who it was also lovely to see after all this time.

And that really concludes the trip, other than one final story about Hannah's legs. By evening time, Hannah's legs were extremely swollen up and numb, so at this point Mum got out the symptom sorter and Dad and Nik decided that Hannah definitely had DVT in both legs and needed to be taken to hospital after she had finished her cherry pie. Having been up for about two days, Hannah could actually not cope with the though of being dragged to A&E on a Saturday and the act of going to bed being put off any further. As such, she googled her legs and decided it was just fluid retention and point blank refused to leave bed - it was 100% worth the risk of death from a DVT to not have to stay up any longer! As it happened, by about 3am (when Hannah's body decided to wake up), the legs had gone back down to normal size. Good times.

So that (prematurely) concludes our travel blog, although, we might continue to put any relevant updates and bits of interest on here related to travel etc in the future as we do and see things. It's a shame to admit that our day to day lives probably will no longer be interesting reading!