The last leg of our trip played itself out in Europe. On Monday afternoon, June 4, we hired a cab to drive us through the ugly city of Lima to Jorge Chávez International Airport. At that moment I didn't regret having stayed in Miraflores all that time, because the rest of the city didn't look like it was worth exploring. If I ever see half-finished brown buildings again, it will be too soon!
I was looking forward to the long flight and the many movies that I would be able to watch en route, until I discovered that we were flying with an old airplane and that we didn't have a personal screen. Suddenly flying over the Atlantic Ocean at night for 12 hours without any distraction seemed like a daunting task. Luckily Jochem had booked us a couple of seats with extra leg room, but it was still uncomfortable and we didn't get a lot of sleep.
In the afternoon on Tuesday, June 5 we arrived in sunny Madrid. We had a bite to eat and some much-needed coffee before boarding the 2-hour flight to London, where it was cold, grey and pouring rain. We got on the subway and made our way to our cosy hotel near King's Cross. Experiencing Europe's efficiency and cleanliness was a bliss after so many months of backpacking! We went to Charlotte Street where we had dim sum for dinner.
The next morning we got on the nicest train in the world, which took us to Birmingham, where Aimee picked us up. We met Aimee and her husband Matt in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia and immediately bonded over travel, South East Asia, food and vegetarianism. They're wonderful people and it was nice to see them again and exhange stories. While Matt was at work, Aimee showed us downtown Birmingham. We did some shopping, had lunch and ate cake. For dinner they took us to one of Birmingham's famous vegetarian Indian restaurants where I had the most amazing thali and mango lassi. Thank you, Matt and Aimee, for a great day!
The next day we took another train to our beloved Edinburgh. We visited Edinburgh for the first time last year, when I took Jochem there for his 25th birthday, and immediately fell in love with it. Of course, then, we were blessed with four warm and sunny days. This time, however, we were not so lucky. Still, I love this city more than ever and, just like last time, I would love to live there. If Edinburgh was a city in the Netherlands, I would move there instantly. I hope that one day we will be able to move there - not indefinitely, but maybe for a year or so. I said the same thing when we visited last year, but it's so easy to forget once you're back home. Possibilities become huge obstacles once you start to think about the practicalities of moving abroad (or at least to me), but I hope that we can make it happen someday.
Edinburgh is such a great city because it has it all: history, greenery, culture, restaurants and night life, while it seems like a small and easily managed place that cannot be compared to other capitals that I often find pompous, overwhelming and simply too big. But my favorite thing about Edinburgh is that the locals know their priorities, namely eating out and drinking. We had but a mere day in town so we had to squeeze in as much as possible.
First point on the agenda was to pick up Mariëlle from her hotel. She wasn't able to visit us in Chile so we were thrilled that we could show her around Edinburgh. We took her to Arthur's Seat for a hike up the volcanic mountain, possibly my favorite place in town. Next stop was tea and cake for lunch. We spent the next few hours wandering the many beautiful streets of downtown Edinburgh and making a few stops here and there - nothing too demanding. We ended our evening with dinner at
David Bann, Edinburgh's best vegetarian restaurant.
And then, suddenly very quickly, the moment had arrived to go home. The three of us got on a plane and in a short hour the all-too-familiar sight of the Dutch countryside came into view. A whole delegation of family and friends was at Schiphol to welcome us home. Unfortunately, the weather in the Netherlands wasn't very nice either, but that didn't stop us from traveling to Utrecht for a well-deserved bag of fries with Dutch mayonnaise and fresh 'stroopwafels'. Back in Almelo more family and friends arrived to welcome us back home.
And now we're home. We're official residents of Almelo and are living at my parents' house. Our pets appear to recognize us and will surely forgive us any day now for forsaking them for 9 months. We unpacked our backpacks and after overcoming the initial shock of the unreasonable amount of clothes in our closet, we gave about a third of it away to charity. I have started my parttime job invigilating and supervising exams and am applying for teaching jobs in the 'Randstad', while Jochem got his old job back in exactly 3 days and got back to work this morning. We're looking at apartments in Amersfoort and have made an appointment for our very first location sighting in preparation for our wedding, although I get more excited thinking about possible honeymoon destinations than looking at wedding dresses. I've been so busy working, running errands and meeting up with family and friends that I haven't really had time to relax and let this new reality sink in. I suppose I'll get to it, eventually.
If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!
