The Good, The Bad, The European

I made it back from Europe, finally. And I had a ton of fun!! I did have to comment today to a coworker it is such a luxury to go to the bathroom and not have to pay for it! I will, of course, give a full update of everything that happened including pics when I have more time. But I did want to tell you some of the adventures we did have. Please know I am not complaining about these things, I was in Europe for crying out loud!! I can almost laugh about some of them now!

The day we left there was a freak April snow storm here in Utah. Our flight was 2 hours delayed which meant we missed our connection flight to Barcelona in Atlanta. We got rebooked for the next day, and went to find a hotel. Emily's luggage was in Atlanta, but they could not pull it for us, my luggage was rerouted to Rome... not really sure why. But luckily I had packed a set of clothing in an overnight bag. We had almost all day in Atlanta to play, so we went to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum. It was fun! And our luggage met us both in Barcelona the next day!

On Sunday in Barcelona we decided to take the metro to the docks to save some money on taxis. We had all of our luggage with us and got in an elevator. 5 other people crammed into that elevator and... it hurts me to admit this... I got pick-pocketed. They created a flawless distraction where one of their gang got tangled up in Melissa's luggage and when I turned to help her one of the girls snagged my wallet. I panicked when we discovered it, ran back to the elevator where my wallet was laying on the ground. They had taken my cash but left everything else, thankfully. So I did not lose my credit cards or driver's licence. They did take $100 US and $100 Euro which is about $250 US. They also took my pride and my good mood for a while. Darn my parents for raising me to be helpful and nice! All is well, though, I got more money on the ship and I filed a police report so hopefully my trip insurance will get me my money back. Remember when I debated buying trip insurance?! Never again will it even be a question! Always buy it when travelling, especially out of the country!! I used it 3 times with the flight delays and this robbery.

The cruise was amazing, and I will tell ya'll about it when I have more time and pictures.

We were supposed to fly home Monday but after sitting in the plane for 3-1/2 hours our flight was cancelled. The Portugal airspace was not clear for us to fly under 38,000 feet and we had too much fuel to get to that height. We were rerouted to Paris yesterday morning, and then flew direct to Salt Lake. We flew over Iceland and actually saw the volcano and the ash cloud. It was an amazing site!

More later!!