June 25 -- Back to the U. S. of A.

This was and early starting day. Everyone was up by 6 AM. The taxi to take us to the airport would arrive at 7 and we of course needed to be ready. We got things loaded up into the taxi and said our goodbyes to Melanie and we were off to the airport. The trip to Heathrow was uneventful. It's much more of a challenge to get you bags to the terminal if you have a lot of them and we did. Fortunately the trolleys were free so we loaded one up and off we went. I had checked in the night before so all we had to do was get our identities verified and we were then off to security.

All of us were either scanned after going through the metal detector or had our luggage searched. It was not big deal. The folks were very courteous and had a sense of humor about the whole thing and we didn't have to take our shoes off. Even with the delay it was much more pleasant that have TSA do the same thing in this country. I think the biggest difference is the attitude of the people doing the screening. Any way that got accomplished and we were off to get some breakfast.

We all expected breakfast at Heathrow to be very expensive but it turned out to be very reasonable and very tasty as well. The passenger waiting area was like as shopping mall with a large food court and plenty of bars. The gate assignment came up about 15 minutes before boarding time that had actually been delayed about 30 minutes due to late arrival of the aircraft. Got on board after going through another security procedure and we were ready to go. The pilot came on the intercom and said we would be delayed because the airport went into one runway operation. So we didn't push back and taxi for takeoff for about another 30 min.

The flight to Chicago was very pleasant. The flight attendants were very attentive. All-in-all it was a very pleasant flight even for being in the cheap seats.

Got the bus to Waukesha about an hour and a half after we cleared customs and retrieved our baggage. Seemed to take forever for the driver to get the bus loaded and we finally left the airport about 5 PM or so. Nice trip back to Waukesha but my butt was really sore from sitting all that time. With errands still to run and dinner to eat we finally got to bed between 9 and 9:30. We were all hoping for a good night's sleep.