Flight Connections

Just came back from a two week cruise of South America. Boy am I beat. I know, I know cruising is the ultimate relaxation since you do nothing on board but eat and sleep, but, the plane ride to get back home was absolute torture. I'm not sure why we had to transfer 4 times to get from Brazil back to Manila (okay, so I know that we were on the other side of the planet, but still I blame Ahya Jo (our travel agent) for this, lol!), but it was a looong loooong flight.

We got to Sao Paolo airport around 1:30 pm for a 9:30 pm flight to Miami Florida (we had no choice because the connecting flights of our parents was at 2:00pm), we were VERY early. So early that there was no one at the American Airlines counter (this has not happened to me before, in the past, there have been times when we got to the airport and there was no one at the counter but that's because we were so late, they had already closed! hehehe). Needless to say, we were forced to leave our bags in a locker (cost about $40...bummer) since we could not check in yet. Since we had a long wait ahead of us, we decided to check out a nearby mall thinking that when we got back around 5:30, we would probably be the first in line. Lo and behold, when we got back to the airport around 5 pm, we were surprised to see that the line to the check in counter is about half a mile long weaving across the entire length of that building (what the heck??? it's 4 1/2 hours before the flight!) I guess a lot of the royal caribbean people have also been at the airport for a long time so they started queuing at 3??? I had no idea what was happening but it took us almost 2 hours to get to the check in counter (what I wouldn't give for a business class ticket so I don't have to queue like this!)

Finally, at 9:15, we boarded our American Airlines plane for a 12 hour trip to Miami. The first thing I wanted to see was if we had entertainment of demand (as opposed to one wherein the shows just loops from start to finish over and over again...which means that if you miss the start of a movie, you would have to wait until it ends to repeat it) Imagine my shock when I realized that we did not even have personal TV sets! I mean, come on, it's a 12 hour flight! After I got over my shock, I decided that I'll just watch whatever is showing on the big screen. Of course, I ended up not doing that, either, because they wanted us to pay to rent the earphones ( I don't think so!!!) I didn't even know what movie they were showing. So i ended up sleeping uncomfortably the entire trip (only getting up to grab something to eat) Again, I'm back to my eat and sleep mode (hahahaha!).

We landed in Miami around 5 am fully expecting that all the stores (except for the newspaper stand) will be closed. So it was a pleasant surprise when we saw that a lot of the stores were already open (there was even a Barnes and Nobles inside the airport! :)) Anyway, our arrival there was a little bit delayed so we had only a few minutes to look around before we had to board our flight to San Francisco. We did not realize that the walk to our gate was so long that by the time we got there, they were about to close the doors of the plane (now, this is more like us...always arriving in the nick of time, never early, never late, just exactly on time!!! lol) It was another 6 hour flight to San Francisco. Again, since this is American Airlines...no personal TV, no earphones and also, this time, not even free food service (food must be paid for...again, I don't think so!!!). At the end of this flight my back was sooooooooo sore.

Part two will come soon...