One Week Later

It's been a week since we ended our journey. The trip turned better then was expected.
Plans for next year have already started. We will be going back to Lausanne and heading up and over the Alps through "St Bearnard's Pass". The trip will be 31 days and take a year to plan.

A few things to note about the final leg of our trip. Flying the tandem over to England cost $150.00, coming home, 65 Euros, the same cost of shipping an extra suitcase.
Our flight from Geneva to Dublin then Dublin to Boston.
When we arrived in Dublin we did not know what gate we were going to be flying out of until the last 20 minuets. When it was finally posted, we had to run.
The United States Customs are in the Dublin airport. The Customs wants to check you out before you do the flying over so if there is a problem, they will not have to fly you back. When we arrived at the Customs, they asked how many bags did we check. The customs agent could see on his monitor a photo of our three bags on the ramp as we were checking them back in Geneva. When I said we also have a bike in a box, things changed.
We needed to go into a different room and wait until they located our bike box. After about 20 minuets, the customs agent said, "I have good news. "The good news" was that they found the bike and had a picture of the box on the ramp entering the plane. He said we could now go.
To make a long story short. The tandem was left in Dublin while we flew home.
When we got to Boston we were told that the bike never made it onto the plane and would be delivered to the house when it arrived the next day.
This is not the first time that this has happened to the point that it was expected.
The bicycle was delivered that next day at 10:30 pm and all is now fine. It was however an upset that it had been kept in Dublin, known as the number one bike theft capital in the world.

Our final stamp for our travel passports at the Cathedral in Lausanne was a good one. Most of the stamps were simple address labels without any picture. Past pilgrimages, the stamp had some type of symbol representative of the area we were in. This trip we were told that they were going to be getting something soon for this route, but for the most part we only got the address.

We are looking forward to next year's trip. Keep in touch with this blog from time and time again for updates of our plans. Thank you for coming along with us on the Via Francigena Adventure!