This is part of a series from our recent travel to Europe in June/July 2026.
Waking up at 6:45 AM is never ideal, but today an exception will be made. We have a flight to catch. Twenty days in, I’ve stopped being surprised by how normal it feels to wake up in a hotel, mentally inventory which country I’m in, and start the packing choreography Chris and I have down to a science by now. This was the last time we’d do it. After three weeks, New Orleans to Berlin to Hameln to Brussels to Paris to Normandy to Champagne to Strasbourg to Rothenburg to a literal castle on the Rhine to Frankfurt, today was just about getting home.
We met Jason, Jamie, and Izzy downstairs and headed to the airport together, and for once, nothing went sideways. Security was a breeze. Check-in was a breeze. After three weeks that included a cancelled train, a rental car adventure, and a day that started at a castle with genuine uncertainty about whether we’d make the next city on time, an uneventful airport morning felt almost suspicious. I kept waiting for the catch. It never came.
Here’s where I’ll admit to a small indulgence: we paid to upgrade our seats for the flight to Houston. Three weeks of trains, castles, and questionable rental car decisions had earned us that much, and when I saw what we’d actually be flying, the upgrade felt less like a splurge and more like fate. We were flying the 747, the Queen of the Skies, and not just on it, but upstairs. If you’ve never flown the upper deck of a 747, it’s its own small world up there: quieter, more private, tucked into that distinctive hump that made this plane a legend long before I ever set foot on one. There’s something fitting about ending a trip like this on an aircraft that’s an icon in its own right.
The crew made the flight. We had a flight attendant named Augustus who was warm in that unforced way that sticks with you long after you’ve cleared customs, working alongside a colleague whose name I never quite caught but whose service matched his. The food, and I say this as someone who has eaten a lot of mediocre airplane meals over the years, was genuinely good. Everything about the service felt considered, unhurried, like the crew actually wanted to be there. Twenty days of European trains, hotel breakfasts, and one unforgettable castle later, it turned out one of the best meals of the trip was at 38,000 feet somewhere over the Atlantic.
Did I mention the mid-flight cake service? Black Forest cake, as in a real cake!
Somewhere over the ocean, headed toward Houston and then, eventually, New Orleans, it started to sink in that this was actually ending. Three weeks is long enough that you stop counting the days and just live inside the trip, long enough that the person who left New Orleans on June 23rd, wallet drama and all, feels like a slightly different version of the one flying home now. We watched Berlin become Hameln become graduation balls and breakfast on Connie and Gerd’s patio. We watched Paris go from just James and Chris to suddenly full of family, with Izzy discovering a version of the world she’d never seen before. We drove through Normandy in near silence. We slept in a literal castle. We did all of that, and now we were flying home to a dog who had no idea any of it happened.
That’s the part I was most looking forward to, if I’m honest. Not the bed, though the bed was going to be very welcome. Merle. We’d gotten video updates and photos during the trip from our friend, Zach, who was his guardian angel while we were away, the same friend who, three weeks and a lifetime ago, sprinted Chris’s forgotten wallet to the airport before we’d even taken off. Every update was a small tether back to a normal life that had been on pause since June. Seeing Merle’s face on a screen from a hotel room in Hameln or a castle window in Oberwesel was a strange kind of comfort, proof that home was still there, waiting, exactly as we’d left it.
There’s a particular quiet that settles in on the last leg of a long trip. Not sad, exactly. More like the feeling of closing a book you loved, knowing you got the whole story and it was good. Twenty days, 3-4 countries, one enormous cast of characters both old and new, and somehow it all held together. We landed in Houston, cleared customs, and made the final short hop home, already replaying pieces of the trip out loud to each other the way you do when something mattered enough that you’re not ready to stop talking about it yet.
And then: our own bed. Merle, in person instead of on a screen, doing the kind of full-body greeting only a dog who’s been waiting three weeks can manage. Sleep that didn’t require earplugs, blackout curtains, or a wake-up call.
Twenty days ago this trip was just an itinerary on a spreadsheet. Now it’s a season of our life we’ll be telling stories from for years: Michele’s graduation, a family reunion in Paris, a beach in Normandy, a castle we still can’t quite believe we stayed in, and a 747’s upper deck on the way home to close it out. Not a bad way to end things.
