Emergency Vase Delivery

We are back home again, safe and sound in West Hampstead. When Dave originally planned this trip I questioned the wisdom of flying all the way to the Canary Islands for something like 36 hours on the ground. But it actually proved to be a nice little break -- a dose of sunshine and semi-tropical beauty, and lots of time for offline reading in the air! So bravo to Dave for cooking up this idea.

(I know it was terrible for our carbon footprint, and we stayed at a golf resort to boot. But hey, we have no kids and we don't drive, so our overall footprint is still pretty small.)

We left yesterday in late morning, after breakfast at our hotel. I had bought some milk at the Hiper-Dino on Thursday to put in my "cowboy coffee," and I wanted to use it up before we left, so I brought it to the restaurant and put it on my cereal. Dave made fun of me for bringing my own milk and I'm sure the waitress wondered what the heck, to the extent that she noticed. But I used it up.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you about the Emergency Vase Delivery. Dave and I were lounging on our hotel room terrace the afternoon before when a knock came at the door. We'd already dismissed the maid and told her we didn't need cleaning, so we couldn't imagine what this was about. The knock came again. Dave had been sunbathing and had to put on his pants to answer the door (I was still outside because I didn't hear the first knock) and when he opened it, a maintenance man was standing there with a big ugly white vase. "This for apartment," he said in broken English, and came in and set it down on a cabinet in the living room (where we already had at least five other decorative vases and bowls).

"We were missing a vase!" I said to Dave in mock horror.

The maintenance guy just shrugged sheepishly and let himself out. The whole thing was so strange. Why didn't they just wait until we were gone to deliver their completely unnecessary vase?

Sunset from the airplane window, seen off the coast of Morocco or maybe Portugal. Somewhere out there.

The flight back was uneventful. I read about half of Gary Shteyngart's book "Super Sad True Love Story," which is entertaining and weirdly prescient. It was published in 2010 and depicts a near future where the USA is an authoritarian dystopia that has invaded Venezuela! I KNOW! Shteyngart must be feeling like Carnac the Magnificent right about now.

We finally got home about 9 p.m., just in time to order chicken from Nando's and then fall into bed. But after a good night's sleep I feel totally normal, having not changed time zones or disrupted our sleep schedules. I see the appeal of Tenerife as a British vacation destination!