Although technically my trip to Germany ended a couple of nights ago, there’s still the matter of getting my ass back to Vancouver.

Yesterday I took a flight from Munich to London and then spent the night in London last night.

And now, it was time to finally come home.

A London morning

My flight back to Vancouver wasn’t leaving until 3:30 in the afternoon so I actually had the whole morning free since I didn’t have to leave for the airport until 12:30.

Honestly, I only had one thing I wanted to do this morning and if you’re a regular reader of the blog then you now it involved food.

Yup, I was back on a mission to get a English Breakfast dammit.

I failed miserably yesterday ended up with a crepe.   It was a good crepe, mind you, but not what I was craving.

I wanted the eggs, the bacon, the sausage, the beans, the toast, the hashbrowns, the tomato, and the black pudding.

With the gluten allergy I knew I couldn’t have the black pudding but I was hoping to get everything else including a gluten free piece of toast.

So, yeah, that was the mission this morning.

Did I succeed?

Well, this was my breakfast…

Yeah, that was a big fat juicy fail again.

Sigh.

When the plate came it just looked so sad.   I mean, at least I got gluten free toast but, damn, where’s everything else?

Guess I’ll just have to make my way back to London again.

I also stopped by Boots pharmacy to buy some heat pads to bandage up my shoulder.

I haven’t mentioned it at all in the blog but I’ve had a sore left shoulder the entire trip.

It honestly feels like there’s a tear in my upper arm and when I sit in certain positions or stretch my arm the wrong way, I get a big jolt of pain.

With an upcoming flight of almost 10 hours I really wanted to mitigate the pain as much as I could.

Airport security

I finally left for the airport at 12:30 and an hour later I had arrived at Terminal 2.

Again security was quick but I did have both of my bags go down the second conveyor belt for a secondary inspection.

Ever since I decided to go exclusively carryon last year, one of my bags has gone to secondary pretty much every trip.

Every time I feel like I’m ahead of the game there’s something else.

Toiletries all taken out and put in a bag?   Yup.

Laptop out?   Electronics out?   Yup.

Well, like I said, both of my bags didn’t pass primary inspection today.

My little travel scissors apparently looked menacing in one bag while those heat patch bandages I had just bought looked awfully suspicious in the xray of the other bag.

Even with all that, I still was in and out of security in about 15 minutes and, again, I found I had a good 2 hours to just hang out before my flight left.

What to do?   What to do?

Oh yeah, I know!

Eat!

My last meal

What?   You thought that pitiful breakfast would be the last food photo I’d put in the blog this trip?

Nah, I couldn’t go out like that!

After getting through the gates I popped into Pret a Manger to grab a salmon and mango salad and an apple and oat yogurt cup.

And that was my official last meal of the trip.

Stretching out

As many of you know, you can choose your seat on a flight ahead of time for a fee.

The fees are usually in the $60-$100 range and if you want one of those “preferred” seats, well, that’ll run you even more.

The preferred seats are basically the ones near the exit row or by a bulkhead that have extra legroom.

For short flights I don’t even choose my seat and leave up to the airline’s random number generator.

On longer flights, though, I’ll spring the money to choose my seat which is what I had done for this flight.

Despite paying for a regular seat on the aisle, I was somehow assigned a preferred seat.

Yup, I’d be living large on this flight with my legs stretched out.

My seat was in the middle section of the plane on the aisle next to the exit door.

And to make things even sweeter, no one sat in the middle seat so I had lots of elbow room too.

It was quite possibly my best seating arrangement on a flight to date.

Of course, as usual, I never slept on the flight but that wasn’t the end of the world because it was an afternoon flight instead of an overnight one.

Soon after we were in the air lunch was served and, as usual, my gluten free meal was brought out way ahead of everyone else’s meals.

Ironically, it was salmon.   It was served with roast potatoes and vegetables and was pretty decent for an airline meal.

The salad that came with it, not so much.

And the gluten free bun, yeah, not the worst I’ve had but let’s just say I needed to lather it up in butter to eat it.

I’ve actually started to wonder if I should just get the regular meal if the only difference is that I can’t eat the bread.

I asked the flight attendant about it later and it turns out that I wouldn’t have been able to have either selection today since one was pasta and the other choice was chicken done in a sauce containing gluten.

Well, guess that answers that question.

A few video downloads later and another meal was served near the end of our flight.

This time it was a nice tomato and cheddar frittata.   Man, I could have eaten a few of those.

Before you knew it, we were already on our descent into Vancouver.

Ugh, Translink

We landed just before 5:30 this afternoon and I was through customs and out of the airport in just 20 minutes.

Sadly I couldn’t find anyone to drive me home from the airport this time.

I’ve been very fortunate in past trips to have different people offer to drive me but, at the end of the day, I know it’s quite an imposition for people since I really don’t live close to the airport.

Honestly, I always feel awkward even asking for a ride to or from the airport.

So, yeah, I was out of the airport but my journey wasn’t over yet.

I live about 50km east of the Vancouver airport and there’s no direct bus or skytrain to get home.

So, with a skytrain, a bus, and yet another bus, I was finally back home almost two and a half hours later.

But I was home!

Another trip was in the books.

Where am I off to next?

Stay tuned…