Pilgrim Blog 40 - All the way home

Luggage Check-In, Madrid-Barajas International Airport. ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2023

Just before 7am Madrid time, we were checking our luggage in at Madrid-Barajas Airport. Qatar Airways was taking us on both the Madrid to Doha, and the Doha to Sydney flights. For our Madrid to Doha flight, we were in a Boeing 777.

And the Boxing Kangaroo pillow belongs to… ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2023

You might remember that when we landed in Milan for the beginning of our pilgrimage, a flight attendant gave this neck pillow into my keeping since it obviously belonged to an Australian pilgrim. Despite sending up flares on social media, and making other enquiries, its ownership was still unknown. I had hoped that someone would have claimed it at the Australian gathering in Lisbon, but no. Yet waiting in the lounge at Madrid airport the connection was made.

This pilgrim was a helper with the White bus; and had elected to do his European sight-seeing before meeting up with the White bus pilgrims in Lisbon. Since he had already ordered an exact replacement of his missing neck pillow, he graciously bestowed it on me. You can’t make these things up!

The Orchard, Doha-Hamad International Airport. ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2023

Going through the indoor tropical garden at Doha airport to find food. I ended up choosing sweet and sour fish with rice. Despite longingly looking up at the elevated driver-less people-mover monorail both times we were at Doha airport, my fellow pilgrims elected to do the 15-minute walk between where we landed and where the second flight was departing from.

Ground-level Sydney. ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2023

Yay! Thanks be to God. Just before 5pm on 12 Aug we were back home on ‘terra firma’, at Sydney International Airport, Mascot. We landed 10 minutes after the pilgrim flights from Paris. The pilgrims who flew home from Lisbon arrived in Sydney on 11 Aug.

From a straw poll of pilgrims, the average length of sleep that first night home was 14 hours. All of us are slowly recovering from jetlag and exhaustion. We’ve been told to expect it to take two weeks to get back into normal sleep rhythms again.
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Please pray that all the seeds of grace placed by God in pilgrim hearts over these three-and-a-bit weeks will, in His timing, yield an abundant harvest. Amen.
 
 
Vincent Cavanagh
#bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023
15 Aug 2023, 9.32pm Sydney

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