saying goodbye and flying away

We are home now.  Home in our Seattle home.  But more on that later....

Our last few days in Chandigarh were nice.  In fact, they were some of the nicest days we had in India.  Tyler was freed from his program; we went to the end of the quarter party; we went market-strolling;  we discovered mango milkshakes.
It always is interesting how your perspective on everything changes when you are about to leave a place.  Suddenly everything appears to you as how it might be in a memory.  You are pre-maturely nostalgic.  You realize there are things you have been doing every day, places you walk by, people you see-- all things that you actually might miss when you're gone.  So what do you do?  Well, you go out and do these normal routine things with maybe a little more purpose than you normally would, and you say your sweet silent goodbyes to street corners, mango tree men, orange roadside flowers...  You buy one last samosa from your favorite shop, and that is that.
A few photos from our final weekend~ (click to enlarge)

Fancy party at the Chandigarh club.  Tyler in his tailored-suit (with partial Nehru-collar).

on the red-carpet

three architects.  

so many bangles!  

warm weather play 

shopping one last time in sector 22

who is this guy?

saying goodbye to India traffic

The journey home was truly not bad.  We expected the worst (Violet had a horrendous time on our flights to Paris and India in January), but really everything went very smoothly.  A few factors/tricks that made the whole thing easier:  

1) Violet is still [just barely] under 2 years old.  What does this mean?  It means that we didn't have to purchase a seat for her... which felt like a huge mistake on our way over, but on the journey home we convinced the flight attendants both ways that she was small enough for the airplane "bassinet" (which she was, kind of...) So she was able to have her own space the entire time, and even curl up and go to sleep for parts of the flights.  

2) Our flights were during the day (not red-eyes)-- so Violet wasn't crazy-overly tired.  She just napped as normal.

3) We split up the trip wisely.... We treated ourselves to a very nice hotel in Delhi, and then again in Paris.  Oh my goodness-- the buffet breakfast in Paris, honestly some of the best food we have ever had. A dream come true to have coffee, sausage, stacks of buttery pastries, thick cheese, berries..... all the things we missed in India, suddenly there on our plates.  Our 5 hour stop in Finland wasn't bad either, we had meatballs and played in several of the many kids areas in the airport.  We drank tons of water.  We slowly refreshed ourselves.  

And then to arrive, after 3 days and about 30 hours of plane travel, in Seattle-- with my parents waiting to take us to Whidbey to recover.  Oh, bliss.  

We made it home, and we are so incredibly happy.  

More photos... 

at the Chandigarh airport 

it's being worked on...

we saw one last Hornbill!  

more airport

on our way to departure

"engineering wing"? oh dear.

walking out to the airplane

R+T  :)

In the Delhi airport

our modern child, watching Curious George on the iphone in her baby bassinet.

I promise we don't plug our child into the iphone every day.  Just during 30 hour plane travel.

flying over Pakistan

sweet sweet sleep.  

Flying over Moscow.

Helsinki airport, Finland

Violet and G-raff riding off into the sunset.