Headed for home. Thursday, June 20, 2013

Well, the party is (almost) over...

Carrie and I are sitting at the Dublin airport and I guess I am destined to spend another 5 hour time slot here. Our flight is currently delayed for 3 hours so the 5:45 wake up time was unnecessary. Fortunately for us we each had a 5 hour layover in Chicago so as of right now we are still scheduled for our original flights home from there.

One last adventure as we prepared to leave Ireland. We had a basket of tomatoes we had purchased on our marathon trip through the gas station grocery store in Northern Ireland. We saved them to eat on the plane neglecting to factor in that we would go  through US Immigration and customs while still in Dublin. When Carrie admitted that she had tomatoes in her bag she was whisked off to the secondary stage to be questioned. She spent a nerve racking 20 minutes for her turn for customs officials to speak to her  while I waited and wondered what the heck was going on behind closed doors. When they finally got to her, they basically thanked her for being honest as they confiscated our lunch.

With all of the TSA, customs, immigration, second round of TSA and more men in suits asking for our passports the time delay was eaten up. We promptly boarded our flight where we were disappointed to learn that it was going to be impossible to sit together as we had hoped. The only available seats when we booked our flight were one in front of the other. I was certain that we would  find a nice somebody to trade seats. It turned out that the reason there were only single seats left was because there was a large tour group on board and they were all couples sitting side by side in rows of three seats.

When we arrived in Chicago Carrie and I only had enough time to grab a quick lunch and say goodbye. She dropped me off at my gate and I boarded immediately. She was supposed to board her plane a very short time later but in keeping with her bad luck with flights this trip she was delayed two hours.

I spent the flight from Chicago to San Diego sleeping as I have never slept on a plane before. Complete exhaustion following a great holiday with my sister whom I adore.

Happy 50th birthday Sister!