One last early coffee, and one last walk down past the cathedral to the church. Hard to believe the seven weeks are over again.
We will miss the White Ocean Celebration this weekend. They are hanging up more stuff now; starfish appearing overnight above the square, mirroring the stars in the cobblestones below.
If we returned I think we’d spend a couple days in a smaller beach town, Mosteiros or perhaps Moinhos. But for a first trip I think Ponta Delgada was the perfect place to stay.
We caught a connecting flight in the smallest airplane ever over to the island of Teceira for our flight home to Oakland. Looking down the island seems similar to São Miguel; green fields marked out by stone walls, a volcano rising into the clouds, a town of white houses with red roofs. But I don’t see the flowers. I could see coming back to visit the other islands sometime.
The plane was so small that our carry-on luggage didn’t fit. People’s small packs barely fit in the tiny bins.
We had to wait a couple hours, so we ate pizza and drank a glass of wine and bottle of water.
Going through security they took my new corkscrew away. The one bought after my little “TSA Compliant” one was taken in Madrid. The one that I took on two flights already. This whole security thing with what you can and can’t carry on is one big joke. What’s fine one place is taken another. My thoughts now, after eleven years is, if you want to take something (corkscrew, lotion, small bottle of alcohol) just try it. It is totally random if they will take it or not.
We had to get stamped out of Europe at pasport control. Back in early June when we came in through Iceland, the passport stamper thing was running on dry ink. The lady here was having a helluva a time trying to find when we came in. She finally found it in Gail’s passport, but gave up on mine and just randomly stamped me by Copenhagen, 2017.
Our flight to Oakland was on a big Azores Air jet.
We flew out at 14:00 and landed in Oakland at 18:00, eleven hours later, after a surprisingly good dinner.
BONUS: we got packages of Azorian cookies, five per pack. I stashed them safely away. We didn’t really buy any gifts for friends or family on this trip, so I plan to wrap the ten cookies and give them to ten people when we are home.
Email me quick if you want on the list!
A couple hours on I-5 and we were home, in our own bed, back to friends and family.
It was an interesting, different summer.