It’s super early in the morning and I’m sleeping on and off. I took a few random walks with Corvin and Danelle getting steps in. I slept in my chair. Then things got weirder. First, the Lima airport has no water fountains. If you want water, get out your wallet. Second, they started setting up lanes with the mobile poles and the fabric straps that come out to connect to the next one. Literally a foot from where I was sitting. There was very little space to walk. It felt extremely rude.
Turns out (I found out from one of my walks) that for US flights, they open all of your luggage and search it for liquids. When we finally did load, I was a freaking zombie. I was awake, but not aware. I went through the line where they opened up my suitcase and barely searched. Then the same thing for my backpack. Next we went to the ticket scanner. We scanned and had all 4 of us with passport issues. We were sent to a “line” that was just a group of us waiting for a single person on a laptop to fix our passport issues. After scanning my passport, she asked in English “final destination”. I had a zombie stare. After the third ask, one of the family said over my shoulder “St. Louis, Missouri”. I just nodded till I was sent along.
Landing in Atlanta, it was a further poop show. We had to get our bag from baggage, then walk around the corner and hand it to another lady that put it back in queue to be loaded on a plane. Then we were forced to walk all the way out of security. We spent nearly 90 minutes going back through security in Atlanta with a ton of people. It was frustrating, but I was keeping it to myself as complaining wouldn’t fix anything. Once we were nearly through, we found out there was a fast line we could have gone through that might have taken 5 minutes. Airports only make sense if you go often or work there. For those of us occasionally visiting, we don’t know the system and have to deal with it.
Going through security, the family likes to remind me of every last detail (hat, belt, shoes). Its getting old, but I play along as there is no need for a fight. I made it through he metal detector successfully this time, but my backpack got flagged by TSA. I saw the circled “issue” on the scan and knew it was 3 pieces of jellied fruit at the bottom of the bag. The TSA lady unloaded my backpack then grabbed each package and poked and prodded it. That of course wasn’t enough and ran some chemical over each package. Good thing the TSA protected us from jellied fruit…… Eventually we got back together and all dressed again. That is when we found out our flight to STL was delayed a second time. Now we’re hoping to board the flight at 5pm that is supposed to be packed. If all goes well, we’ll touch down in STL at 5:45 tonight. Oh, make that flight 5:25 landing just after 6pm.
While we waited for our flight, we got lunch in an Atlanta Braves themed restaurant. It’s weird to be paying US prices again, and annoying to be dealing with US tips. The restaurant included an 18% gratuity and then listed suggested additional tips from 18% to 30%. The flight to St. Louis was smooth and included a lovely sunset for those with a window seat.
Shout out to Ingrid for rolling with the delays. She picked us up and got us back home to a trio of kitties who were very happy to see us!! And to our own sweet beds.