Almost home...but not quite (by 600 miles)

e got up this morning (yesterday now) at 5 AM to get to Gatwick Airport to begin our trip home. Our schedule would take us from London to Madrid to Lisbon to Funchal, and although none of the flights was very long, there was a 5-hour layover in Madrid and another 4 in Lisbon, so we were to land in Funchal at a quarter past midnight, 19 hours after we got up.

After coming all the way from London, we got within 2000 feet or so of our house (the approach to the airport almost passes right over our house) but as we came in for the landing we had the ride of our lives. A lot of people on the plane were convinced it was the LAST ride of our lives. Fortunately we had seats right over the wings, not in the third-to-the-last row, like we did on the Madrid-Lisbon flight. There was a lot of screaming coming from the tail section, and the cabin staff had to rush to the back to help a passenger that was apparently overcome by the experience. You would have thought we were on a bucking bronco, and at the last second the pilot aborted the landing and announced he would circle briefly to see if the crosswinds would die down. If not, we would return to Lisbon. They didn't, so we did.

It is now 4 AM and we just got to a hotel. We landed back in Lisbon at about 1:45 AM and it has taken that long for the airline to get the situation worked out. When they can work out a flight to get us to Funchal, they'll call us. We hope it's not an early flight, because we just got here.