We got up on Saturday morning at 9 am or so. Our checkout time was at 11 am, but the shuttle didn’t take off until 12:55 pm. We got our stuff packed up and carted out to the front desk and decided to hang out around the pool for awhile. But first, breakfast. We ate at the Bayside mostly in silence. Being our last few hours in St. Lucia we were both sad. We went and took pictures since we had about 20 pictures left on the new flash card. We did the typical shots that we eluded all week; the shot on the swing set, next to the ocean, etc. Now, we had worn our jeans since we knew we would be going back to freezing Pittsburgh. We had looked at the northeast weather forecast and it was about 15 degress Fahrenheit in Pittsburgh. So it was a good idea in planning, but in practice it was not good at all. We overlooked that we still had to be in St. Lucia for another 5 hours. D’oh!
We got on the shuttle to the airport and settled in for the 90 minute drive. It was a nice drive and the last images of St. Lucia culture flashed past us as we raced through the mountains and banana fields. We arrived at the airport and were greeted by the baggage handlers who were a little more than forward about asking for a tip. Also, a strange thing, people were walking amongst the ticket counters drinking beer out of bottles. So very odd. Also, they had Cadbury chocolate in the gift shops. I mean real Cadbury chocolate from England. Not just those sugary egg things. Fabulous chocolate. Anyway, after waiting in the St. Lucia International Airport for a few hours we boarded the plane (US Air) to Philadelphia. USA or bust!
On the flight home I read my book (Lord of the Rings Trilogy Collectors Edition) and snuggled with Bridget. We also got the headphones to watch the movie. The movie was ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. It was cute but kind of a chick flick. It was a nice light movie though. Nothing too brain intensive.
The flight dragged on for 5+ hours. We finally came into Philadelphia. As we came in, we saw the Eagles and Falcons playoff game going on at the stadium. It was pretty cool to see the stadium from the air. We ended up having to circle the airport for like 10 minutes or so, That wasn’t so bad since we were actually quite early. We were feeling kind of nervous though because our connection was only about an hour and 5 minutes. We finally ended up landing and we taxied around for about 5 minutes, seemingly going in circles. Then the captain came on the loudspeaker and said, “Uhhh, folks, this is your captain speaking. We’ll be taxiing around for a few minutes while the tower finds a terminal for us to park at.” I was shocked. We didn’t have a terminal? Wasn’t this all decided beforehand? I thought, ‘fair enough’, and complained a bit to Bridget and worried about our connection. We only had about 50 minutes at this point.
We eventually ended up getting into a terminal about 10 minutes later. 40 minutes until our connection. We got off the plane and sprinted towards the next terminal. Over the loudspeaker we hear, “US Air flight XX(some number, I forget) baggage is on baggage carousel number 3″. This confused us since they said our baggage would be checked through to Pittsburgh. The tag said Pittsburgh and that’s what the lady at the US Air counter in St. Lucia told us. We thought we’d go check it out since we didn’t want our luggage being left to the masses. We emerged into the baggage claim area, which is laid out very poorly in Philadelphia, and saw the biggest mess ever. There was baggage EVERYwhere. It was piled on the floor next to the carousels and stacked two bags high on the belt. There were hundreds of people on top of all of this. I was infuriated.
We searched for our luggage by running around looking through all the piles. We realized our luggage was nowhere to be found so we decided that it was possibly checked through to the plane. Just then another announcement came on that out luggage was coming out of the chute. We watched and finally got our stuff. This all took about 15 minutes. We grabbed our stuff and went through to the hallway towards customs. I told Bridget to run because I wanted to get in front of all the other people that were headed towards customs. I saw the sign for customs and sprinted toward it, luggage in tow. Customs was up a large set of stairs so I had to pick my bag up as I ran. I ran up the stairs and customs slowly appeared before my field of vision. I ran about two thirds of the way up the stairs and my field of vision widened enough for me to see about 350 heads. Getting to the top of the stairs, I saw that the customs line was full. I mean FULL. We got in line and I immediately looked at my watch. We had 25 minutes and there were about 4 lanes open. We were in one of those velvet rope mazes and we were seriously 16 turns back. Trust me I had plenty of time to count. Our flight was at 9:50, we were three quarters of the way towards the back of the line, and we were going nowhere, slow.
We kept winding our way towards the front. Lots of complaining going on around us. The line was so thick that security was making people wait at the bottom of those aforementioned stairs. There was obviously a serious planning problem given the events going on around us. We finally got through customs after about 20 minutes. We had 5 minutes to make our way to the gate. We ran as fast as we could towards the gates. It was at this point that we realized that the layout and signs in the Philadelphia airport are useless. The signs point in conflicting directions. One sign sends you one way, but leads you to a sign that points the opposite direction. Useless.
We finally made our way to the right corridor and we hit another security checkpoint. We had to do the metal detector thing again. We got in line and waited with a couple from Buffalo that we had met on the airplane ride to St. Lucia. They stayed at Sandals as well and we frequently saw them during the week. The girl was behind us in line and one of the security guards told her that she couldn’t bring her bag through the security checkpoint. She said to the guard, “The guard down in customs told me to bring it up here.” To which the guard replied, “You can’t bring that through here.” The girl was immediately irate. Given all the idiocy that was going on in that airport I can’t blame her. She said, almost yelling, “What do you want me to do? Go back down there and have the other lady send me back up here?!” To which the guard replied, “You can’t bring that through here.” To which the girl said (yelled), “What do you want me to do?” Once again, the guard without fail said, “You can’t bring that through here.” This went on for awhile and the girl and her husband eventually had to leave and go check their luggage. This made me mad as well.
I made my way towards the metal detector, thankful that our bags were small enough. They made me take my shoes off. I was wearing Doc Marten’s boots. Bridget has a pair exactly like mine. She waltzed right through. We sent all our stuff through and of course my bag set off the x-ray machine. Some dude in a security costume took my bad and opened it and warned me not to touch anything. He got into my shaving kit and opened it. He took out my manicure kit which was a gift from Chris White for being in his wedding. He opened it and removed the small cuticle scissors. I was not happy at all. We complained to him about it and he felt bad about taking them but made it clear that it was the law and he had no choice. This is where I come back to point that our luggage should have been checked through to Pittsburgh.
We got through that and it was 5 after 10pm. Fifteen minutes past our flight departure. However, we jumped on one of the trolleys. It was the last two spots on the trolley and we took off. Another girl, late for her flight, ran behind us yelling, “Wait!” We looked back in sadness as it could have been any one of us. We rambled through the airport corridors and I realized that had we made our way through customs and the luggage ordeal we never would’ve been able to make it anyway. Running to our gate would have been futile. It was a looooong way. As we went through the terminals there were airline people everywhere yelling cities. I heard Detroit, Chicago, Charlotte, and Buffalo. I yelled to the airline attendant that I knew for sure that there were two people from Buffalo on their way. I thought since the guard at the metal detectors had screwed up our friends chance, the best I could do was get them to hold the plane a bit longer.
We got to our gate and to my surprise they had held the plane. We gave them our luggage which they checked (grrrr!) and we boarded the plane. They had to open that door to the plane that they never open after it’s closed. I was surprised. We got on the plane and everyone there looked agitated. We were definitely getting some evil looks from people. Luckily, there were about 10 other people that were in the group that was keeping the plane from leaving. We sat down and complained to the guy next to us about the airport. He wasn’t surprised. We finally took off at 10:25pm.
We landed in Pittsburgh and followed the well laid out signs and transit tunnels. We met my brother who was picking us up, retrieved our luggage which was clearly marked and we headed to the parking lot. It was snowing, about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind was whipping. We went home, collapsed into bed and slept most of the next morning away.
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p> As I remember more things I’ll write about them. There were many little adventures that I’m sure I’ve overlooked. Stay tuned!
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Filed by AxsDeny at 12:51 am under General
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