August 16 -- Traveling home

We got up in time to say goodbye to the half of our group on early flights, then worked on photos for the web and blog. At 10, we hiked to a mall to turn in our VAT refund paperwork and buy dinner for the plane. We discovered that the VAT station didn't open til 1, and we had to be on a bus by then, so we walked around and looked at stores. I especially enjoy home-oriented stores in other countries, and we found some interesting items.

I hate to think about the size of bug that this swatter is designed for.

Cubic watermelon -- probably quite the space saver for shipping!

 Our trip to the airport was quick and security was fast, so we had a bunch of time to kill there. The Duty Free store had more little bottles of wine and Bailey's cheap, so I bought a few beverages for the plane. Audrey came back from her wanderings and announced that she had found Magnum Bars!  Keep in mind that as we hiked the steep hills in Greenland, I thought of how I was walking off the excess Magnum Bars, and I had already resisted TWO purchasing opportunities in less than 24 hours. The third time, my resistance was down, so we got our last Icelandic Magnum Bar.

East Greenland from the plane -- you can see the glaciers and hills and pack ice.

This is West Greenland, south of Nuuk -- here it looks like the glaciers are melting into rivers. Closer to the sea, the ground appears to be a lot flatter.

The flights were full, but trouble-free except for one thing: the plane we were due to take out of Minneapolis was an hour late because of thunderstorms. On the plus side, it arrived, our luggage appeared quickly, and we got home only an hour later than planned. On the down side, our planned arrival at SFO was midnight, so with Erika and Jesse retrieving us from the airport and driving us to the car we had stored with them and THEN driving home, it was approaching 2:30 AM when we got here. BUT we did, and it sure feels good!

We had a wonderful trip and have posted the rest of the trip photos (ok, not all 1700...) in Picasa.  You can find the photos by clicking on the photos at the bottom of the page or clicking on this link: Picasa Photos

Time to start planning our next big trip! But first, 2 smaller ones: a couple days in Oceanside visiting my mom and daughter, and then a week in DC visiting Dan's family.