Temperature was in the 70s and I had spent a delightful morning enjoying a mimosa with breakfast and a leisurely swim in the hotel pool, which was both indoor and outdoor.

The Portuguese and the Madeira islanders light up their cities for Christmas. Each main street had a different light theme and they were all beautiful. I wondered how much the light bill would be.

The 70s lasted just long enough for the plane trip to Lisbon on Friday. The Lisboa (that's the way they spell it) Airport is huge, four stories high, and when you go from one floor to another you go through security. My titanium knee never set the alarms off, so going through security was not a problem, just a nuisance of taking off my jacket, putting the purse, passport, jacket and boarding pass in the basket and walking through.

Four times did seem a little excessive.

Once in Lisbon, the itinerary was to catch a flight to Newark, arrive in the United States and then get a flight to Minneapolis, arriving at 7:30 p.m. The flight to Newark was more than two hours late. The good thing was that the flight to Minneapolis also was late.

I finally did arrive in Minneapolis about 11 p.m., where my son, Rick, met me. I was one beat traveler - it had been a 25-hour day and I had a head cold.

Late Saturday morning, I drove back to Pelican Lake. I was delighted to see all the snow. European CNN and BBC television broadcasts in English had talked about snow in the Midwest. Minnesota is unknown to Europeans - we are in fly-over land.

So I wasn't sure if the snow was in Minnesota or Kansas. The weather reports just skipped over North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Oprah and her trips to help Obama's campaign did put Iowa on the weather map.

I'm glad to be home. Thanks to a good neighbor, my driveway was plowed and the walk shoveled. The suitcases were emptied, the washer started, and I'm getting back into the routine. I'll be sorting out my photos, and writing more about my trip in the coming weeks.

If you called me and got no answer during the weeks I was gone, please call again.

Traveling is fun, but as Dorothy said, "There's no place like home."