Day 74: Gravesend, UK!!!

After breakfast Kris returned to bed to nurse his hangover while Bas and I explored the Grand Bazaar for a couple of hours. The whole bazaar was under cover and made up from thousands of little alley ways with every one being made up of the same stalls. We wandered around getting more and more lost and hassled by every store owner to looky looky! We left with a couple of souvenirs which were unfortunately breakable perhaps not the most sensible idea seeing as we had to somehow get 2 bikes, 8 paniers and 2 bar bags to the airport. We returned to the hotel to find that Kris had made it out of bed and was attempting to pack the bike boxes with as much of our gear as possible. We managed to squeeze the majority inside leaving just hand luggage for the flight that should save time and effort later on. We showered and met our private taxi at 1pm which meant finally saying our goodbyes to Bas. Well it was more of a see you later as we are sure to visit him in Athens or New York in the future. On arrival at the airport we were made to put all luggage including the bike boxes on a conveyor belt and through an xray machine. Thankfully no problems so we continued to tape the boxes up until the tape ran out! We had lunch and waited to check in. Again we had no problems at check in as we were under the weight allowance however, we were asked to leave the boxes at the desks which was quite scary abandoning all our possessions. We cleared passport control and waited in the lounge to board the plane. We were both gasping for water and after counting out the remaining pennies we had 1 euro and 1 ytl which after pleading with a man in cafe we had a small cold beverage. The flight was 4hrs but was filled with movies, drinks, free daily mail newspaper and dinner which tasted surprisingly good. We landed at Heathrow Terminal 5 and had serious doubts over the collection of the boxes but were very excited to see them there in one piece and ahead of everyone elses luggage! We manouvered the oversized trolley through customs with nothing to declare and were met by my mum and aunty Jill along with several helium balloons, hugs and smiles. After a short struggle we managed to squeeze the bikes in the cars and drove home sharing hundreds of stories. We followed yellow ribbons tied to lamposts all the way to our front door where we unloaded and enjoyed a nice cuppa english tea! Glad to be home.