Divamensch
SUNDAY 3/5, TRIP HOME
One last breakfast at the Lighthouse Terrace. Thankfully the birds weren’t so aggressive this time.
We both noticed that the copper chandelier was streaked with what we felt safe assuming was bird poop. Ew. One resourceful bird took a packet of Splenda up to the chandelier.
Richard wanted to have a little more time in the sun, so he did that while I went back to the room, showered and shaved, and started to pack. He got back to the room, showered, we finished packing, and we had a wistful little moment out on the balcony. I thanked him numerous times each day for taking us on this trip, and of course I had to thank him at this particular moment, our last moment on our balcony looking out at the ocean.
There was a cab right there at the hotel to take us to the airport. We each got a slice of pizza from Chefette in the airport (Richard had the Hawaiian, I had the pineapple, green pepper, and corn), we went through security and sat at our gate.
Our plane arrived at least an hour before our flight left. We started getting on the plane at around 2:30 PM. It looked like everything was on track to be wheels up at 3:05 PM, as planned. We sat there for a while, then we started slowly driving around on the runway. One of the flight attendants announced that they were having problems with the air conditioning, and we would be about 20 minutes. Then another delay, another twenty minutes, another lame apology, a few lamer jokes about the delay, another problem. At one point we were told that they were considering taking us back to our gate, letting us off the plane, and transferring us (by bus) back to the terminal. It appeared that most of the other passengers thought this was a great idea, but Richard and I both thought it would add another hour onto our departure, because some yahoo would be lingering in the duty free or similar. Thankfully we weren’t let off the plane, but there were other delays, and in the end we were in the air at 5:22 PM, two hours and fifteen minutes later than our scheduled departure time. Plus we were told that due to our delay, we now needed to take a slightly different route, which would add another 20 to 30 minutes to our trip. GROAN. The whole thing was intensely frustrating, but what can you do?
Richard made the good point that surely they must have known when the plane landed that they were having trouble with the air conditioning - - so why didn’t they fix it in the hour before they let us on? Or keep us off the plane until the problem was fixed?
But what a glorious trip. The hassle of our trip home melted away after a day or two, and all I was left with was lovely memories. Here's a good one:
