Coming home after 11 months in Europe+

 What a ride this has been! 

So many people are asking how we are feeling about the transition home... so I thought I'd write a few things down to capture the current scenario. 

We successfully flew from Barcelona to Calgary (10.25 hours) and then Calgary to Victoria to arrive back. It feels so exciting to be back in Victoria, although we do not actually get to return to our own house, our own cat, and our own stuff until next week (it's still rented out)... so a bit of chaos continues...

We are staying with family here and there. We got our car back (my brother had borrowed it for our time abroad) and we have just commited to buying a second car.

Two proud parents at the end of the trip, ready to fly home from the Barcelona airport

Two amazing kids, very excited to go home

Feelings and things currently happening amidst this transition:

1) PRIDE - we did it! We talked about going for many years, and threw around so many ideas on the different types of trips we could do as a family. But we really did do it. We spent 11 months away from our house traveling as a family. We went to so many places, did so many things, and saw so much... all together as a family of 4.

2) AWE - We went to USA, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, Wales, Ireland, France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, San Marino, Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, and Andorra. That's 24 countries if you count them all! 

We originally said that after Iceland and Scandanavia, we would stay somewhere for about a month and then transition to another place and stay there for a month. We had planned on taking in about 9-12 countries ... but it didn't work out that way at all!

3) GRATITUDE - We know that this trip was a once in a lifetime experience. We know that we are very privileged to have done this. This was a very special experience from an opportunities perspective and from a family time together perspective. 

For one of the first times in my life, this trip gave us as a family the gift of TIME. We often had a lot of time together to, for the most part, decide for ourselves how to spend it. We didn't often have schedules and plans and have to be places at certain times unless we made it so. What a gift! Our time at home is so scheduled and busy and full of work and school and extra curricular activities and we love that too... but this unstructured time together was unique and full of lessons.

Also, we were so lucky. Nobody got sick (except for some sickness in Cinque Terre). No hospital visits. No serious accidents (except perhaps for one broken hand from a visiting family member and another torn finger ligament from another visiting friend). No lost luggage, no lost passports, no pickpockets or stolen bags or major hiccoughs... everything through our whole trip worked out so well.

4) FEAR, EXCITEMENT, ANXIETY, NERVOUSNESS - this transition home feels quite scary and awesome in many ways. Happy to be here in Victoria but it's hard not yet being in our own home. And when we do get into our own home, we have to unpack our garage and find all of our belongings and move back in before we will feel settled. Some of our belongings were at my mom's, some are in California with family, some are in Virginia with family.

We are returning back to Victoria, yes, but it feels very new also. Our time in Victoria since we moved to the city in 2018 has been mostly full of the pandemic vibe... so now we have chances to build better friendships and join in activities with others.

The logistics and all the things that are coming up are extremely overwhelming. Jason and I both feel like our brains are moving at 1000 miles/minute and our 'to do' list is quite long. Personally, my anxiety is really high right now and not sleeping at night due to jet lag with less exercise is not helping. I know that after a few more days and more sleep, everything will be great and all come together... but I wanted to share that honestly it's all very exciting but also hard to handle it all.

5) JOY 

Seeing our friends and family is warming our hearts. Rachel's friends met her at the airport with a big Welcome Home sign - it was awesome! Ava started back to school and her school friends welcomed her with smiles, cheers and hugs that made Ava smile from ear to ear like I haven't quite seen in a while. It's very special!

What else is coming up?

Jason - 

Jason is training for the HardRock 100 miler in July, so he's got big training in the next few weeks. He also has to spend the weekend in Seattle volunteering at an ultra so that he can fulfill his volunteer hours requirement. He took the ferry to Seattle not even 40 hours after we landed, and is biking and camping all weekend at the race.

He worked on campus in person the day after we landed and he has lots of work projects coming up. He is also very excited to ride his own bike and get out paddleboarding when we can. Soon he will see our yard and the garden and get excited about the flowers if we have any left!

Meggan - 

Meggan is going to start work at a new clinic next week, which is really exciting. It's called Brix Wellness and it's close to the house with a great team of people. Lots of logistics to get set up as a new business with all the required paperwork, marketing, etc... but it is going to be great. I am SO excited to see patients next week and get my hands and brain back into my professional mode. I do love my work very much!

Ava 

Ava hit the ground running and returned to school right away. We have been preparing for the upcoming activities and projects so that she can be right there with all the end of year school activities. She's already had hot dog day and a book fair. Next week she has a track meet. The week after that, she will perform in the school musical as "Camper Sleepy" and she will be selling her Beaded Buddies at the Young Entrepreneur Fair. 

Rachel 

Rachel will not be going back to school, but she has grand plans. Play dates every possible moment, helping with chores at our house and family's. She is planning on being a grade 1 helper in a classroom soon, but already volunteered at the Book Fair and will be helping out at the Track Meet next week. She is very excited that she was selected to be a WEB leader in Grade 8 so she will have some leadership training for that at the end of August. So much excitement!

More reflections on the trip, our favorite places, what we packed, what we would do differently, etc to come still... 

Thanks for following along!

Salou and our last few days in Spain

We spent our last few days in Spain in a little seaside town called Salou, which is just south of Barcelona near Tarragona. The reason we were in Salou was because of an amusement park called Port Aventura.

We drove there from Toulouse, France, and stopped in Girona, Spain for a pit stop. It just happened to be the last day of the Flower Festival, so we walked around for an hour with a lot of other people and saw some cool exhibits here and there with flower themes.

A tired road tripper

After that, we made it to Salou and checked in to the last accommodation on this trip for 3 nights before we would fly home to Canada from Barcelona.

 

This accommodation came with LEGO!

Another beautiful beach: Salou, Spain

Monday we rode rides almost all day at Port Aventura World. This theme park is actually three parks: Ferrari land (which is rides all related to a fast car theme), a water park (that isn't open until June) and Port Aventura World, which is the one we went to. At this time of year (late May) it is open from 10:00am-6:00pm on weekdays. We weren't sure how busy it might be, but buses filled with school field trips started to arrive when we did and it got pretty busy. By 10:30am, the waiting time for the "Furius Baco", a very short and fast popular ride, was 90 minutes in line. But thankfully that didn't really last, and we were able to spend most of our day waiting 0-20 min for most rides. There were lots of roller coasters and lots of water themes. Different members of the family did different versions of things. I didn't ride the big scary coasters: one with lots of loop-de-loops and one that went really high and fast. We all rode the miner's train (very much like Big Thunder Railroad at Disneyland in CA) and the wooden roller coaster (which was right at my personal limit). We enjoyed the log flume ride many times. One of the water rides called Tutuki splash got us REALLY WET!! Thankfully the weather was pleasant, although it did rain on and off some so it wasn't hot and sunny. 

For 56 euro per person over 10 years old, we felt like it was totally worth it.

Teagan really bravely going on the crazy high coaster

Ava and Daddy then rode it over and over again

This boat ride around "Cambodia" was one giant water fight.

We had a really fun time and it was a great way to end the trip. 

We finished off Salou with some time at the beach, and then drove back to Barcelona and flew home to Canada. 

Finding one of the coolest geocaches ever not far from Salou

We found gluten free Creme Brulee at the store for our last dessert together

Adios, Spain!

Toulouse, France and the canal du midi

We left Andorra and went down in elevation to the city of Toulouse for 3 nights. The weather in the mountains wasn't forecasted to be very nice, so we changed from our original plans of being in the French Pyrenees to going into the city lower down.

We started our visit with a lovely run, as we were staying outside the city in a more residential area.

Then we caught the metro into the city and walked around exploring. We enjoyed the basilica, a beautiful church, and the old bridge (called pont neuf). We also found a really fun games store and a Harry Potter shop.

Then we went to the Hall of Machines, which was a really unique experience. This company has made some very creative machines. Some play music; others are huge and walk and move and breathe smoke!

The next day we rented bikes and rode the first section of the 'canal du midi'. This canal is 240km long from Toulouse to the Mediterranean sea and is as old as 1666. There are many locks along the way and barges travel up and down the river. A lovely recreational path runs along side most of it, so cycling over several days from Toulouse to the sea via Carcassonne is a popular thing.

We went to Carcassonne back in October, so we didn't need to go again. But we enjoyed the beautiful canal for a day trip. We rented bikes in two different ways: adults over 14 years old can rent bikes all over Toulouse very affordably, from something called VeloToulouse, for up to 24 hours. Then we rented a tandem bike for an adult and kid to share (and helmets for all) from a bike rental service called "le petit velo". They also do bike shuttles and support people renting and doing point to point trips along the canal, which seems like it would be really fun.

If you ever decide to rent a barge in the area - take note - some of the barges are very old and look like they might sink!!

One of the nicer looking barges

We stopped and watch 2 boats sink down in the lock

 

Teagan was pretty impressed with how far down the water level went in just a few minutes

On our way back from Toulouse to the Spanish border, we stopped near Narbonne to see if we could see any of the flamingoes that frequent the area. It was raining and we didn't see any flamingoes, so we just kept driving and went South in to Spain.

Merci, France! Au revoir!