Well last time we wrote we were stuck in Spain. Well not to spoil the ending of the story we made it home about 12:30 midnight Tuesday morning after a very long journey home!
Let me take you back to Saturday morning…. We g
ot up and checked to see if our flight had been cancelled and they had. This was not good how do we get home now! Some of our friends were flying to Venice but there flight had also been cancelled three of which were heading to Austria and five to Croatia so we all sat down and tried to get a plan together.
First we tried to hire a couple of cars to drive us to Austria but the hire companies by this point were not allowing their cars to go over any borders. Then we got a bit silly and said how about a boat mmm lovely Austria is a land locked country but after about 10 minutes a voice pipes up we can get a ferry from Barcelona to Livorno in Italy so after we thought about it we booked our tickets! But we had to be in Barcelona for 10pm so the race was on!
We jumped in a taxi and headed for Gandia train station the first of many we would be going to. So our first train was from Gandia to Valencia then at Valencia a train to Barcelona from there we had to get the Metro to the port to catch the ferry to Livorno (in Italy)… but little did we know we were being watched!
As we boarded the metro a man got on just in front of Johnny and made out he had got on the wrong train and tried to get off but kept blocking Johnny from getting on now behind Johnny were two other guys and Rachel who was pushed and knocked over in the kerfuffle. Then just before the doors shut all three got off then our friend turned to Johnny and said, you better check and see if you still have you wallet, but it was gone!
We reported it to the police who apologised and said unless he needed a record made for our insurance there was nothing they could do! So off we went to catch the boat now by this time it is about 10 at night (Sat.) and we had 5 kids who were getting tired. So after about 2 hours we finally got a seat on the ferry this would be our home for the next 20 hours! In fact it took us 24! But we put jackets and jumpers on the floor so the kids could lie down and go to sleep.
While on board the ferry some of the other passengers decided it would be good to get groups of people together who were heading in the same direction and hire some buses now our group managed to get on the bus to Milan. When the boat got into Livorno it was about midnight (Sun./Mon.) so we headed to the bus going to Milan which took about three hours. Now having arrived in Milan after three in the morning we went to get another train which took us to Venice then another train from Venice to Treviso then from there we had to get the bus to the Venice (Treviso) airport and this is where our group would be splitting up. One family heading to Croatia and three members of the Austria team heading to Carinthia in Austria, both cars had been left at the airport! Our lovely friend Jac had arranged for our field leaders intern to come and get us from the Treviso Airport and drop us at the train station in Villach were we got our last train to Vienna which took us about six hours where we met our lovely friends who were looking after our car for us. We made a quick stop at MacDonald’s for something to eat then it was two more hours until we made it home which we did! It took us in all 60 hours to get from Spain to Linz!
We have visited some really beautiful place especially Venice and I think we have enough holiday destinations to last us few years! While travelling we saw what happens when people work towards a common goal and those who don’t. Through our entire trip we felt Gods hand on every plan we made and even when Johnny’s wallet had been stolen we still knew God was there. In our group we got the chance to get to know each other better. We also had some laughs. We shared an experience that will be with us for a long time.