Continued from Florence 2026 Day 4 Part 2.

We are going home today! We’ve been all ready to go home for about a week now, so it’s nice it’s finally happening. What’s not so nice is that our flight leaves at 7:05am which meant that we had to be up at 3am and Uber pickup at 4am. I tried to schedule a regular private pickup through my Airbnb host, but their driver was unavailable and the other number they gave me was only for Italian speaking persons.

I was a little stressed out if an Uber driver will accept the ride and pick us up at 3:45am. At the end it all worked out well. A driver accepted our ride the day previous (well, the original driver dropped out and we had another driver accepted our ride), and they showed up right on time. Easy Peasy.

Too bad we are heading straight to the airport. I bet a 3am walking tour of Florence without the crowds would be kinda nice.

One of the first flights to leave the airport this morning. Terrible signage as the only way I could find our counter was by walking around and looking at each counter. Good thing we got in line early, because the line soon became very long.

I couldn’t get this coffee machine to accept payment. Blah.

Checked in our bags, walking through this pretty small airport.

Got some pastries for breakfast, and good thing we did. Right after this, it was passport control to the “International gate”, which is really like a 3 gate section that’s walled off from the rest of the airport. And once we got to our gate, we couldn’t leave again due to passport controls and there were no shops here other than two vending machines.

At least the coffee machine works here in the “International Gates”.

Let’s do this, so happy to go home.

Super early wake up meaning ZZZzzzs.

In less than 2.5 hours we made it to London. Layover, then one more flight back to Austin.

It’s really crowded here at Terminal 5. I hate how they don’t tell you your gates ahead of time. The lounges were overcrowded and we didn’t even try getting in.

We found some breakfast type restaurant, but this is not really what I want. I went and got some 5 guys burgers (actually forgot to get photos) and some of us ate some food at 5 guys too after this.

PL says this butter looks like boobs.

Terminal 5 always releases gate info as late as possible so you are forced to sit in the main terminal area to “shop” out of boredom. Lame.

Now waiting at our gate.

We board, and this is the condition that I found my seat in. WTF. I found a stewardess and of course it was supposed to have been fixed already prior to me getting on. They called a mechanic onboard and he put a new cover on it. My guess is the previous passenger spilled something on the seat, so they took off the cover but forgot to replace.

There, all fixed.

I saw with LKL, and the girls were in the row behind me. RL got to sit by herself….it’s nice except the kid behind her kept on kicking her seat and he was yelling and screaming. At first we thought he was autistic, but realized that didn’t seem to be the case. He was traveling with his dad, and he just wasn’t really parenting much at all. Shitty.

Maybe this will help put me to sleep?

He was watching a movie on the screen, then all of a sudden decided to put himself to sleep. Well, that’s nice.

I’m not asleep yet, let’s try again. I ended up getting very little sleep on the plane despite being tired. Flying is just uncomfortable, end of story.

Our breakfast item on the plane. I don’t know if you call this breakfast or afternoon snack?

We spent a good amount of time playing Angry Birds together. I hope we didn’t bother the person in front too much as we were tapping at the screen to play the game.

I started watching DTF St Louis on the plane as I’ve read good reviews. And halfway through the first episode I had to turn it off. There was a scene where there were just dicks everywhere. I don’t understand how airplanes get away with putting these shows on these screens that everyone can see, and it’s not appropriate for kids. I mean…kinda crazy.

Poor CL. It was quite windy descending into Austin, and she just couldn’t hold it any longer. Getting nausea sucks.

Back home!!! Nice to be back, finally.

All of our luggage shows up within the first 20 bags to show up…all except for my backpack. Fuck…this is stressful. We checked all bags at the same time, so why wouldn’t it unloaded at around the same time as all the other ones.

Phew, that was scary. Twenty minutes later and after many starts and stops on the conveyer my backpack finally arrives. I was 90% sure it was lost since it was one of the last bags unloaded while all the other bags were ones the first. WTF.

Let’s go, time to get to home, sweet home!

Of course, someone gets motion sickness on the ride back home, and this time it’s LKL. He held it together though and didn’t puke in the Uber.

We did Europe, well part of it anyway. Kids were tired of museums and churches. It was hot, a lot of walking around. The kids prefer Japan better than Europe due to all the fun things they had in Japan, and by that I mean the claw machines. I mean, Japan is for sure more kid friendly than Europe I think. Next time whatever trip we do, we’ll keep it at around 2 weeks instead of 3 weeks.

The End.