Day 20 August 8th

Well it had finally arrived, the last day of our big adventure. We met the day with a mixed bag of feelings. Part 'let's get packed and organised', part sad, part happy (that part was mostly Derry!).

Unfortunately the start was less momentous than desired, being woken by the strains of the trash lorries outside emptying holidaymakers' rubbish...including ours which we'd dumped late last night; several cardboard boxes and spare packaging so the customs folk wouldn't suspect everything was new!

This was a motel without breakfast, so we traipsed down the stairs and along the empty streets of Santa Monica as the shops were opening - we decided we'd have to get moving reasonably early to give us time to check out, pack, and cram in as much as we could on our last day.

Cafe Crepe was our chosen destination, eating outside watching Santa Monica come alive. Waffles, indulgence on hot chocolate and juice was the order of the morning, something to give us fortitude for the coming hours

Naturally we were a little delayed coming back so we almost ran along the now commuter-occupied streets to get back to the motel. Didn't feel like incurring the wrath of the concierge, she seemed fairly fearsome, but she agreed to a 'slightly' later checkout. So Derry immediately plunged into the pool 'rearranging' the stones from around the pool into it!

That at least gave us room to pack in the apartment, especially as Siena spent a good hour carefully wrapping her beloved laptop in bubble wrap, selotape, paper... it was wrapped within an inch of its very new life!

Finally we'd exceeded our 'slightly' extended checkout by a good hour, but we were ready. As we'd suspected, we definitely needed the bags we'd bought. The original speedo bag was at the end of its natural life, but we reckoned one last flight...

We took the car into Santa Monica centre, looking for one last hour on the beach. The beach was busy, quite crowded in fact close to the pier. We walked the length of the pier, optimistic for clam chowder, but we were distracted by the fun fair, which all the kids had a pop at. Derry and Siena the roller coaster, Finn the climbing wall!

We watched fishermen catching stingrays directly off the pier. We were only there a short while but it seemed like time was extending itself for us, and we had time to take it all in with no agenda or obvious time pressure. However we still had a few things to do, so we grabbed the last of the American Churros from the stall and headed down to the beach. Hot sand had us dancing around while we laid a towel or two down, we'd had a clothing challenge, knowing that we were heading back for a dull summer in England but hanging on to the 90 degree sunshine while we could! We opted for the beach gear; finally we knew we'd learnt from our first lesson in Quito.

A few minutes on the beach was enough for the boys, since the prospect of the Apple store en route to the car was too tempting. So off we popped through the car park, and went to join the queue of iphone fanatics awaiting their new gadgets. Being European for the day, we skipped past the queue straight into the store, looking very purposeful. Still not sure whether we were 'supposed' to do that!

I had a tricky manoeuvre to undertake, buying more apple gear than it looked like under the watchful eye of my gadget boy...after all, with the exchange rate an'all, would be silly for Santa not to shop in Santa Monica! So disguising my purchases from Finn with a 'surprise' package for Suzanne, I got away with it and left the store just as the girls were walking up the road. Job done.

Since so much of the big adventure had focused around food, the choice of final meal was a toughie. Fortunately we'd spotted what just had to be the obvious choice - a neat looking Italian restaurant with outside tables and Spaghetti Carbonara top of the menu - Result!!

The meal was delicious, and we had time so we were able to take a leisurely approach - however, it was subdued, at least for 4 of us. Derry was clutching Wilbur who we'd adorned in a napkin - after all, spaghetti can be a challenge to slurp!

So that was it. The journey home was ahead of us, and we left the car park heading for the freeway, LAX and Fenny Compton.

First stop was returning the faithful Toyota Sienna, including the scratch along the side which some naughty road had jumped up at us with. Seemed straightforward enough, though I couldn't get through to the claims line at the airport, so I hung up and left the rental company to sort it out. The bags were laden on the trolleys as we boarded the bus for the terminal - we were up to 7 bags, but remained optimistic the airport would be a breeze- after all we were in LA, how tough could it get?!

OK, so the optimism was relatively short lived - thankfully we were really early so the next half hour was spent with only minor panic! Whilst the overall weight was OK, the rules for American Airlines (which clearly only relate to leaving the country, not arriving, for some strange reason) dictate a maximum weight per bag, but an unlimited bag number allowance. Poor baggage handlers, need to be looked after!

Poor Suzanne who had spent such a long time manoeuvring things around to balance out the bags had to restart (I had to hold the coffee cups, not an easy task I can tell you). Luckily we had 3 or 4 other bags inside the big ones, so they all came out and were loaded up. There was a queue beginning to form behind us, but luckily they were all really understanding and only shouted a few times! Just as a huge party of surfboarders came off a coach and joined the queue, we finally presented our best offer - the Speedo bag was not up for re-loading, being fully roped up and cling-filmed! So we incurred just the one penalty (which was still better than their offer of $25 per airport bag!). the check-in clerk had been reasonably helpful, even turning a semi blind eye to the 'just over' on each bag. There had been a lot of backwards and forward, so we were very glad to finally see all 10 bags go off on the conveyor belt.

By now us experienced travellers knew how to handle a long haul, so we found a seat, chilled out and looked longingly at the nearly empty wallet as we frittered away our last dollars. Unfortunately, and very surprisingly, the facilities in this enormous airport were particularly poor - maybe it was just this terminal but with 3 hours to kill and limited books to read, it was a slightly dull wait.

We still managed to spread ourselves out nicely, ensuring that everyone else in the lounge had to climb over our bags! we were all pretty subdued, all except Derry that is, who had long since declared her desire to end our trip and return home! It was an evening flight, arriving home mid afternoon.

The flight was long, the image of the little plane taking an age to go way up high nearly over the north pole on the gps screen. Finn was transfixed on the movies, Derry slept and watched intermittently, Siena watched, read, puzzled. Suzie and I snoozed, but we were separated by 3 kids so we didn't get much chance to reminisce or chat. Most of my flight was peppered with idle thoughts about what we might be coming back to; house, work, friends, swimming.

Our first thought arriving at Heathrow was 'how on earth are we going to fit all this in a Chrysler Voyager?' We'd reserved the car through one of Colin's contacts, and when I'd discussed it with the chap he'd pointed out that it was not the Grand version, but that he'd still managed to get the Duncans in - and allegedly they travel heavier than us. Oh yeah??!!

Relieved that all ten bags had made it unscathed, we met our driver (whose name escapes me) and his raised eyebrows said it all! However, we hadn't spent the last 3 months carting bags around a different continent to be defeated at this late stage in Heathrow car park 2, so we manoeuvred and re-jigged untilwe were all in. We just assumed the kids were all in there under the bags, because we couldn't see them!!

Just another hour and a half and here we were, back home. This isn't the place to dwell on memories, or to try and summarise, capture our emotions or to make some all encapsulating statement of our 100 day experience. We were home, ready to start afresh, with memories to last a lifetime. Well done if you made it this far!