As we attempted to check out of the hotel, the language barrier caught up with us again. Frank tried to pay with a credit card, but for some reason things would not go through. I'm not sure if the owner really knew how to use the machine, but after a while, we understood that he wanted us to go to the local ATM. It turns out cash is accepted anywhere. A quick taxi ride to the airport again, and we were ready to go. We stopped in the gift shop on the way out, to pick up some Port wine (too bad they didn't have any of the red table wine we had at lunches and dinner). Porto to Paris was once again a quick flight, and luckily this time were able to make our connecting flight just in time, due to some good planning from the ground transport people. The seat were rather cramped coming back, I think the legroom must have shrunk between when I flew over a few days ago. I saw an interesting movie on the personal video stations about someone winning the lottery twice who seemed to have some system, and there was a mathematician investigating his plans. But as it was in French, I don't expect to be able to see the end of the movie anytime soon. It was the weirdest thing to have sunlight outside the plane for the whole trip home, and even shuttting the windows didn't seem to help kill the illusion.
On through customs, and we were back in Chicago. Only now, we had to find our flight back to Madison, and although our flight was through United, we had to find the US Air terminal in a totally different section of the airport. The most beautiful sight of Laura greeted me when I finally touched down in Madison and headed to the luggage checkout. It seems the luggage monkeys had broken one of my straps, but I didn't care much then because I'd just wrapped up my travels for a while. I now plan to sleep for a few days and then get back into the swing of things.
