Sunday, August 30, 2009

Off to Atlanta - Airport Fiasco

Tuesday morning began the “trip from you know where.” Whoever said travel is glamorous and exciting hasn’t traveled with us! The problem was: We bought too many bargains, I was given too many nice things as a contestant and had nowhere to pack them to get on the plane to Atlanta. We get this bright idea that we’ll just pack up what we can in a box and ship it home so we don’t have to fool with it (or pay for an extra baggage claim). Finding a box was a challenge, but once we got it, we rolled clothes and packed that baby tight as a drum. Feeling very proud of ourselves, we get up early, give ourselves an extra hour to drop the box off and drop our rental car. We plugged the Post Office address into the GPS, and off we went – and went – and went – and went – around and around in circles in the same area for an hour trying to find that “invisible” post office. Gave up and came up with Plan 2: We’ll call UPS and arrange for a pickup at the rental car company. We spend time getting that accomplished while speeding to the airport and missing every turn possible, fearing we’re going to miss our flight, but making it in time to just screech through the rental checkout, drop the box and jump on the plane.

We truly are not world travelers, obviously, because if we were, we would have thought through that little “leaving an unoccupied box at an airport” scenario and realized there was no way they were letting us do that. On top of learning that our box would be accompanying us everywhere we went, we learned we had come to the wrong terminal of the airport and we needed to walk about a half a mile to get to the correct place. Paid an extra $55.00 to check out bags and box, and took off at a run. When we get to the gate, we learn that our plane has been delayed, which was a good thing, because somewhere in this crazy mess of a day, I had lost my cell phone. I took off in search of it, and was able to find it 45 minutes later back at the beginning of the trek!

By the time we got on the plane, we were exhausted and wondering what we were thinking! When we arrive in Atlanta, gather up our luggage (picture this: each of us with one huge suitcase, two travel bags hanging off of each arm, one small suitcase, a LARGE box, and two purses) – when we get to the taxi stand, the guy takes one look at us and says there’s no way we’ll fit in the car, so he makes us wait to get a taxi big enough for all of our junk. We had intended to ride the subway in to the hotel to save money, but by that point, we didn’t care what it cost – we were getting rid of that box (and the fourteen other bags!) When we arrive at the hotel – guess what – NO LUGGAGE CARTS! Three trips later, our stuff is stowed away and we are ready for our market adventure.

No comments:

Post a Comment