December 5th: Paris to Home

I slept terribly that night, but oh well. Nothing I could do about that! I threw on some clothes, and we went out to find some breakfast.

There was some really cool street art near our hotel. I especially liked this cat bat.

We went back to Le Roi de Pique for some coffee and a croissant...

...then stopped at a nearby bakery and grabbed a pain au chocolat. Might as well eat as many French pastries as possible while I could!

We wandered through a small park...

...and watched a couple older men playing ping pong.

I was still feeling a bit rough, so we found a pharmacy so I could get some stuff for the trip home (especially since we were connecting through Iceland, and I know they don't sell any kind of medicine at the airport there). A very helpful lady in the pharmacy helped me find some stuff, and I was set. We went back to the room, grabbed our bags and checked out, and made our way to the airport.

We were connecting through Iceland, and should have had about an hour and a half connection time. That was nice, in theory, but for some reason we boarded the flight suuuuper late and didn't leave until almost an hour past our scheduled time. Oh well...not much I could do about that!

Goodbye, France...I had such a good time!   :)

Mark and I were sitting a few rows apart, and I wound up sitting next to a couple that was hoping to connect to Baltimore. We spent almost the entire flight talking about different places we've visited, which helped pass the time.

Eventually we started our descent into Keflavik. I had already mentally prepared myself to spend the night in Iceland, since we would only have about 10 minutes between when we got to the gate and when our other flight was supposed to start boarding, and we would have to clear customs, too. We got off the plane, I found Mark, and we RAN.

Somehow, we made it! We flew through customs (and maybe cheated by hopping in the faster employee line haha), and got to the gate right as they were starting to board. I was honestly a little disappointed (I'd never turn down a night in Iceland), but after nearly two weeks, we were heading home.

I always think it's cool when we get to fly over Greenland; I'll get there one of these days!

We eventually got to Dulles, and by the time we got to the baggage claim area, they were already paging me. Turns out while I made it on the plane, my checked bag did not. Mark's bag somehow did, though. At any rate, my bag made it to the US the next day and made it to our house the day after that (and I always keep all of my important stuff in my carry-on, anyway), and with that, our trip was over. It had been such a fun journey; we got to see so many cool things and spend time with so many fun people. I'm grateful we got to go, and it's definitely up there among the best trips we've taken.   :)