I've been home from our great Northern European adventure for about 24 hours now, and it may seem remarkable that I haven't written anything about it. Well, dear reader, as much as I felt that traveling west was "easy," I just haven't had it in me yet.
We arrived home on Thursday night at I don't know what time. We landed just after 6, but between the slow extraction of luggage, the mile you have to walk through the new MCO Terminal C international path, and the insane situation in US Customs, I don't think we even got out of the airport until 8. I don't think anything could feel more American than inefficiencies in mass transit and failure of government to be efficient at anything. Oh, there will be future posts for that.
We did more time changing than I expected. The Internet does not match the actual times that we observed in some cases, or I just didn't understand what was going on at sea. The UK is on UTC+1 for DST. France is at UTC+2, and I learned last week that you have to go all the way west to Portugal to get back to UTC (adjusted for DST). So the at-sea day after France was back to +1, and then back to straight UTC in Iceland, which for obvious reasons doesn't mess around with any kind of DST. Another day at sea, the second Iceland port, and then the next day at sea was +1, followed by +2 the day after that in Norway. Fortunately, that would hold the next day at sea, and match Denmark when we disembarked in Copenhagen. But then we had to travel our way back to UTC-4 here on the east coast. So as I write this, I'm only really a day removed from right now being 2:44 a.m.
I was asleep by 10 local time last night, but had a hard time staying asleep starting at 5:30 this morning. I kind of faked it until 7-something, gave up, and hopped in the shower. I was at my desk by 8 trying to catch up. This generally went well, but I was starving by 11, and again at 3. Cognitively, I was also pretty useless by the end of the work day, with my last bits applied to an interview I had to do at 2 (welcome back!). I had one more meeting, and I ran to the kitchen at 5 to make food.
The eating offset seems in some ways worse than the sleeping, which is likely not helped by the fact that eating is basically a sport when cruising, and this is the longest one we've ever done. But I'm also still fighting the cough I developed in Iceland on Saturday.
It's 9 now, and I'm turning in. Did not expect the adjustment coming back to be so difficult. It may be possible though that it's not just about rhythm, and there are feelings. So much to process.
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