We had to check out of the hotel at 11, the transfer bus was going to leave at 13:50 so we waited in the lobby. Oliver missed his midday sleep but he was in a pretty good mood until we came to the security checks at the airport. In hindsight it might have been worth to pay the extra 25 eur for a late checkout and let him sleep.. still we were hoping that him being exhausted would mean that he would sleep some more on the plane.
We were wrong :)
He got into a good mood after a while at the airport but was in general really, really tired. He finally totally crashed as we finally took off at around 16:00. He slept while the plane basically took off and then woke up again. Despite being tired he couldn’t really relax and go back to sleep for the whole trip. Sometimes I had to just hold him tight to make him settle down a bit, he finally realised that coming to dad meant having to sit still and that there was no point in trying to fight chilling out for a bit.
But all in all he was still in pretty good mood the whole trip and didnt cry much. He was just really tired and flimsy and there was no down-time for either me or Linda. People who say it’s “selfish” to travel with kids really have no effing idea what they are talking about..
We landed at around 22:20 and then took a transfer back to Ibis Hotel Arlanda where we had parked our car. We left there around 23:30-00:00 and I drove straight home, not stopping once. It took a little more than 3 hours and to keep my energy level up I downed an entire 200g Toblerone bar and drank a Pepsi. All in all I was exhausted when I finally went to bed at around 4am. Oliver slept the entire car-ride home and only woke up the last 30-40 km.
The best thing about coming home was the wooden floors..the cleanliness and not having to have to constantly feel sand everywhere. “Borta bra men hemma bast” is a Swedish saying which basically means “away is good but home is the best”.. and that was as true as it has always been.