[Ed. Note: Here’s one more quick word from the Boy…]

So, we spent 13 1/2 hours on a plane. We took off at 9:30am on Thanksgiving morning, and landed at 9am – on Thanksgiving morning.

Luckily, there was a bar on our flight back to America.

Dinner and a movie, a couple hours at the bar, a long nap, another movie, many more hours at the bar…hey, it made our 38-hour long Thursday go by just a little faster than it might have otherwise.

And now we’re home. We circumnavigated the entire planet in 88 days, hit something like 22 different countries, snuggled numerous animals, drank lots of local alcohol, ate some interesting food, and saw some crazy stuff.

And we’re home. Real life is going to be hard.

 

One could argue that this entire 3 month adventure has simply been the longest route home from a vacation in Morocco….with quite a few layovers in between.   Sadly, the 3 months are finally up and it is time to actually go home to reality and haircuts.  [Ed. note: I see you wife, throwing shade…] But not without one more layover story.   Our final routing back to America took us from Sydney to Seoul in the evening and we didn’t leave Seoul until the next morning.   This sounded like a really good opportunity to discover all the wonders of the Skyteam Lounge for hours on end…until Anthony Bourdain came along.

One day shortly after our wacky round the world flights were booked, I stumbled upon a new episode of the Anthony Bourdain show “The Layover”.   I don’t usually watch it, in fact the only episode I had previously seen was when he came to Atlanta and Alton Brown took him to the Clermont Lounge (aka where strippers go to die…), but this episode peaked my interest.   Anthony was going to teach you what to do with a 24 hour layover in Seoul.   With a less impressive but still lofty 11 hour layover in my future, I tuned in to see what could be better than free flowing cheap wine and stale crackers that usually await me in a Delta club room.

So it is with complete seriousness when I tell you that I 100% blame Anthony Bourdain for the fact that I was freezing in some random part of Seoul, attempting to relearn my chopstick skills that were so strong 3 weeks ago, but were now being put sorely into place by the waitress who delivered me a fork of shame not 2 minutes into our Korean BBQ meal.  While he promised me this city was teaming with professionals young and old who went out to dinner and then drinking and onto karaoke each weeknight (so many that the traffic on Tuesdays and Wednesdays was noticeably light with less cars on the road…), we spent 2 hours in a taxi from the airport and when we asked the front desk where to have a drink and do karaoke, they told us that “Koreans don’t do that…”

We aren’t ones to take no for an answer however, so after the questionable dinner (I will be happy to never experience kimchi again in my life, seriously…) we started wandering the streets in hopes of stumbling upon the promised karaoke bars on each corner.  And we wandered…and we wandered…and it started to snow.   (Now’s a good place to point out that our luggage was checked straight through to home, so we were braving this winter day in our carry on sweatshirts and Aussie weight clothing…aka we were once again wholly unprepared for the reality of actual life and climates.)

Snow was the downfall of this layover.   We gave up.  I’m so sorry I can’t end this blog with an epic Korean karaoke battle late into the night, but we caved.   We went to 7-11, bought a couple Korean beers, and drank them in our hotel room with the heater blasting until midnight.   Then we wished each other Happy Thanksgiving, started a timer, and went to bed on what would be the longest Thursday ever thanks to a flight home that crosses the International Date Line and had us landing at home a hour before we left Seoul…