Family Fun in Europe, Part 18: Life on the Sky Princess and Heading Home

This is my eighteenth and final post about our family's 2024 trip to Europe. I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth,  fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth posts before this one. 

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Heading Home

On Thursday, August 1 we left Norway to sail toward Southampton, UK, where we would disembark and fly home. I thought I'd use this final post to share a bit more about life onboard the Sky Princess. 

Sky Princess is a MedallionClass ship, which is really nice. Your wearable medallion serves as a hands-free key, ID, and meal delivery service. The app makes it simple to find family members, view the ship's schedule, send messages, and lots more. 

  

It's a beautiful ship, packed with tons of things to do. Like I mentioned previously, I didn't take advantage of nearly as many planned activities as I normally do. I did meet the family for trivia occasionally...

... and I went to a painting event. I thought there was going to be an instructor, but it turned out to be totally on our own. 

With no plan whatsoever, I jumped in and ended up with this. 

I spent a lot of time in our cabin: reading, watching movies or the Olympics, doing puzzles, or just watching the scenery as we floated by. Or, in the case of bridges, floated under.

The sunsets were beautiful and the seas were blessedly calm the whole 14 days. 

The towel animals our room steward made each day were delightful. 

Of course, I spent a lot of time eating. I had breakfast and lunch at the buffet each day (eaten outdoors, or wherever the fewest people were...

  

... and dinner in the dining room with the family. 

The cruise was restful and a great way to spend time with family. It was exactly what I needed to end a wonderful 3 weeks in Europe. 

Saturday, August 3 was a long (LONG) day. Mom, Dad, Kari, and Allison had a much earlier disembarkation time than we did, so we'd said our goodbyes already. The three of us had to be out of our cabin by 8:45. We waited in the dining room until 9:30, when our disembarkation group was called. We were the second to last group (out of 30+) which sounds like it would be a bad thing, but it's the opposite. We were in no hurry to get to the airport since our flight wasn't until 4:00 pm. With everyone else getting off the ship well before we did, there was no competition for elevators, no lines, and no need to search through an enormous space to find our luggage. We scanned our medallions, walked off the ship, picked up our luggage, and were on our bus in 5 minutes. 

The drive to Heathrow took two hours, but it was a somewhat pleasant drive. Security was quick at Heathrow, although Trevor's plastic playing cards triggered a secondary check... again. Plus, he had to have his shoes screened. Steve and I got to keep our shoes on, which was a nice surprise. 

We had a few hours to wait for our flight, then boarded at 3:30. The flight was almost 11 hours, landing at 7:00 pm San Francisco time. I appreciated the schedule that was displayed on the seatback in front of me. Speaking of which - no upgrades this time. Standard economy. 

Departure, Meal Service, Lights out, Light snack, Lights on, Snack. Would I be able to sleep when the lights went out? (Spoiler: No, but not for lack of trying.) They didn't make much effort to have us sleep since it was westbound. It wasn't especially quiet or dark. 

At least the food was really good. This was the Meal Service, which happened about an hour into the flight. I didn't have the Light snack (hour 5), nor the Snack (hour 9), which was pizza.  

The flight was smooth and without incident, but it's still about the last way I'd like to spend a day. We got home around 9:00 pm local... which is 5:00 am London time, which is how it felt.

I can't complain too much though. My parents, sister, and niece had a similarly long flight from London to Seattle, then a tight layover before flying to Boise. They got home after midnight local. At that point, we'd been asleep for hours. 

Thank you so much to my parents for giving Trevor the best graduation trip ever. Thanks to Kari for all the hard work making arrangements. And thanks to my cancer team for working around my trip so that I could still travel without compromising my health. What a vacation - one I'll remember forever.