Forgot the damn tissues again!! When the alarm went off at 5:00AM this morning I peeled my puffy eyes open & couldn't really believe it was already time to get up. Nigel & I packed up, took a taxi to the nearby bus station & then I pretty much burst into a fountain of tears after that. I was the last one on the bus but the grumpy bus driver had no sympathy or time for long goodbyes. I walked through the bus full of people staring at me, sniffling & blubbering, to find the only spare seat left next to some poor guy who was probably praying I wouldn't cry all the way to the airport! :P I waved to Nigel until he disappeared out of sight…He (yes, you Nigel :P) was the most wonderful travel companion that I could possibly ask & I'm going to miss him very, very much.

Made it out to Beauvais airport & checked in without any dramas. Sat & had a cuppa & started to feel a little better. A cup of tea always makes things seems better :) I was the last person to board the plane because the advantage of traveling solo on 2 hour Ryanair flight is that I really don't care where I sit so I just kick back & relax while everyone else waits in line for an hour then crams onto the plane as fast as they can. Then I just waltz on at the end, no waiting, no lining up, no stress! I just take whatever seat is left, which happens to be an aisle seat, which is exactly what I would have chosen anyway! :) Catching up on blogs & writing down what we've been doing the past few days makes me think of all the wonderful times I've had with Nigel over the past 5 weeks & that puts a smile on my dial :)

And fortunately for me, the perfect antithesis to the sadness of saying goodbye to someone, is to say hello to someone else! I was going to Stockholm to visit my lovely Swedish friend Jessie, who I met while I was on exchange in Vancouver a couple of years ago. We have stayed in touch ever since & earlier in the year she came to visit me in Perth. Actually, I saw her earlier on this trip in Belgium too - kinda crazy (& awesome!) for us to be seeing each other 3 times in one year when we live so far away! So she came out to meet me at the airport with her Mum & they took me back to their summer house, which is not too far from the airport (which despite being an airport that is advertised as being in Stockholm is actually at least an hour out!). They have this beautiful little buttercup yellow house in the middle of the woods & it's so quiet & just gorgeous. We wandered through the garden picking wild strawberries, which are teeny tiny but taste delicious. OK, so we only found 6, but those 6 were amazing! Then I had lunch with Jessie, her Mum, & her Mum's partner Percy, which was just so nice because I hadn't had a proper home cooked meal in so long.

In the afternoon Jessie's Mum drove us into the nearby town, which is where she & Percy live in the wintertime, & where Jessie & I would be staying for the night before we went into Stockholm on Sunday. It's so nice to be able to arrive in a place & have somebody come & pick you up, drive you around, & look after you, & for it to all just be simple! Just what I needed in my state of delirious tiredness hehe I took a nap in the afternoon & fell much more deeply asleep than I'd thought I would. Jessie came to wake me up at 6:00PM & I couldn't believe the time!

In the evening we went over to Jessie's friend Anna's house for dinner with her family (so many pretty, blonde, Swedish looking people in a room all at once!!). Yet another amazing home cooked meal & I felt very lucky to be part of their Saturday night family dinner. AND they cooked pavlova for desert! Amazing! It was like a little taste of home :) Having been in 3 different Swedish houses today I noticed that they are all really beautiful & well decorated. Jessie explained that this is because it's so rainy & cold so much of the time in Sweden that people have to spend a lot of time in their homes & therefore take great pride in making them a place you really want to be. So it's pretty easy to feel at home here, & that night I slept so well on the most comfortable sofa bed I have ever slept on! :)