Traumatic Travels Home from Holiday

The next morning we got up and walked straight off the boat to have a private shuttle pick us up. I figured that with all the public transport and headache I caused earlier in the week that talking everyone into such convenience would be worth it and it so was. Usually the ride to the airport would have been 1 1/2 hours but the driver got us there in 40 minutes!!! So we were about 2 1/2 hours early for mom and dad's flight and 5 hours early for our flight. We sent mom and dad off and we caught a shuttle to our terminal. We killed some time but getting lunch and finally checking in.

The flight home went pretty well until we got back into Heathrow and after watching the conveyor for over 20 minutes we came to the conclusion that we were missing a bag. There was an overhead announcement to direct people coming in from Rome to come to the Alitalia desk if they were missing a bag. Apparently we weren't the only ones in for some frustration. Well, they couldn't tell us what had happened or where our bags were or if we were ever going to get them back. They made us fill out a form and call a number tomorrow to check on things. We were very upset because we checked both bags in at the very same time and the one with all of our souvenirs was some where between here and Rome.

We left the airport with all of our happy thoughts of the cruise now deflated because of our baggage issue. Also we used the Hotel Hoppa bus route this time and it took over 45 minutes for us to get back to our hotel. We still haven't found the most convenient and friendly way to fly out of this country. Well back at our car we felt much better and headed home.

Now that little Addie is potty trained she had been doing well telling us when she needed to go. Well we were pretty much stuck on the M25 and she says she's got to go. We asked her to hold it and like the mother that I am I assumed that she just decided to go in her pants when we weren't able to stop for a while. So as we get off the M25 for a short cut we pass a petrol station and kept going and as we passed it she starts screaming at us to stop because she's got to go potty. We felt awful, here she was sitting back there waiting to go and she actually recognized a place we would have stopped to go. She was really uncomfortable and we could go back so we pressed on to find someplace new. She was crying and said she already went and kept crying that she was "sorry mommy." I took all the blame because I told Kevin to keep going. The poor thing had the most horrific accident and it took loads of wipes to get it cleaned up when we got to the rest stop. She kept telling me sorry when I stripped her down and I just hugged her and said she didn't do anything wrong. I felt like a horrible mom!

Everything got a bit better when we got some McD's in our tummy's and finally made it home a little later. No word on our bag until late on Monday afternoon that our bag got left in Rome and was on a midnight flight into Heathrow and we would get it by courier the next day. I was relieved and sure enough by 7PM on Tuesday we got our bag back.